Love the Warrior
by Bird of Poetry
Summary: Loren learns how to be an Animorph, a warrior, and a mother.
1. The Parable of the Talents

"Jaxom," said Amirekh.

Jaxom blinked at the little brown salamander dæmon. "Hmm?"

"Come on," she said. "We're talking about what happened in Escondido last week."

Jaxom looked at me. _Guess we'd better be sociable,_ he said. I got up and moved toward the table where Maxwell and the others were talking.

Amirekh walked with Jaxom along the table. "So," said Jax. "Um, what happened in Escondido last week?"

"You haven't heard?" Jax was busy looking out for me, but he could tell Amirekh must be staring. "What's gotten into you, Jaxom? You're usually all over this kind of story. A middle school in Escondido wouldn't let an autistic student bring an assistive device into his mainstream classes. Said it was 'too distracting' for the other students. You really didn't know?"

I listened in on Maxwell and Giancarlo and the rest. They were wondering about the implications for the kids they knew, cursing the school board, talking about the ways other people viewed their assistive devices. Not long ago, I would have been one of them. I was outraged by the story, of course, but it wasn't the same as before. My friends in the group had no choice – they had to live as blind people in a world that refused to accommodate them. I had the choice to escape that if I needed to.

_We already have chosen it,_ Jax thought. _We didn't keep up with the news that affects everyone in this group. It just didn't seem important, did it? What does that say about us, now?_

"Sorry," said Jax. "Just... busy, you know. That's awful, though."

"Say, Loren," said Maxwell. Jax dimly saw a flash of movement – Amirekh scuttling back to her usual perch on Maxwell's arm. "What do you think we should do?"

"I think we should organize a protest," I said, easily, just as I would have a few weeks ago. "We should take pictures of ourselves with our assistive devices. 'This is how I live.' Send them to the Escondido school district."

"Sounds great," said Giancarlo. "Can you organize that?"

"I think we should leave that to the younger generation, don't you? I've been doing this kind of thing for years. This is an opportunity for one of them to step up to the plate," I demurred. "Any of the youngsters up for it?" said Giancarlo, while Amirekh gave Jax a funny look.

Most of the kids shuffled in their seats – I could hear the rustling feathers and scraping claws of their dæmons – but Nazneen said, "I mean, I'd like to, but I've never done anything like this before."

"I'm sure Loren can give you advice," said Maxwell.

"You have to target the campaign at the people who matter," I said. "Do your research. Find out who makes the decisions in the school district. It might not be obvious. You could even contact the kid's parents, and find out who's putting up roadblocks. Send the photos to those people."

"Um," said Nazneen. I heard the faintest whisper as she consulted with her monkey dæmon, Bhaanu. "Okay. I'll do it. But I need you all to chip in for film and developing the photos."

"You bet, kid," said Giancarlo. Everyone agreed. Jax suppressed the urge to squirm. At any other time we would have offered to mentor the girl, but between our new family obligations, Animorphs meetings, and just keeping up appearances, we didn't have any time to spare.

_Speaking of which,_ Jax said, _check your watch._

I touched my Braille watch. It was almost time to meet Cassie. "Good luck, Nazneen," I said, though I privately hoped against hope that she wouldn't include me in her photo series. "I'm heading out. I'll catch you all next time."

_If we can make it,_ Jax thought.

Jax felt a familiar tickle on his shoulder – a moth dæmon coming to rest there. "You're not staying for book club?" said Sharon quietly. Sharon and I lend each other books a lot.

"Maybe next time," I said, and left before I could hear any more recriminations. Jax felt a little, bereft, though, when Windlow fluttered away. I got to the bus stop just in time and rode it out to the end of its route. I avoided Cassie's house as best I could on the way to her barn; her parents probably wouldn't take well to strangers wandering in, even if I looked like a harmless blind lady.

"End farce," Jax declared as we walked through the barn doors. The Chee's illusion of darkness faded from my eyes, and I could see Cassie cover her mouth her hand as she giggled. A sense of relief loosed me. All my careful maneuvers to get on and off the bus without tripping or dumping into anyone were frustrating inconveniences now, when they were once routine.

_Do I seem like a stranger, Jax?_ I wondered. _Do you even know me anymore?_

_No,_ said Jax, staring at the wall, a waste of his precious eyesight he could rarely afford when I was blind. _But I'm getting to know you again._

Cassie recovered herself. "How are you, Loren?"

I looked at her, at little Quincy on her shoulder, and it struck me how small she was, in a way it never had from the angle of Jax's eyes. She was 5'1, 5'2" maybe. "Coping," I said.

"Good," said Cassie. "Listen, Loren, I... you should know that I'm the one who came up with the idea of putting Aftran in your head. I'm really sorry."

I blinked. Gentle Cassie, who flinched whenever Quincy had to practice hurting other dæmons in defense class, had come up with that idea?

_She's a soldier, Loren,_ said Jax. _Don't forget that. Besides, that plan may have saved our life._

"I understand," I said quietly. "Thank you for telling me."

"Aftran is my friend," said Cassie. "Please don't hold this against her. Yeerks aren't all bad. She's the head of a Yeerk Peace Movement."

"There's a Yeerk Peace Movement?" Jax exclaimed.

"I don't think Elfangor ever would have expected such a thing," I said. "What do they do?"

"Convince Yeerks to only take voluntary hosts."

"Voluntary hosts?" I looked around the barn. "I think I need to sit down."

"Pick a hay bale," said Cassie, gesturing around. I sat on one, and Jax took the one beside me. Cassie stood before us. She said, "This is important. Nothing in this war is simple. What the Yeerks do isn't bad by itself. What's bad is doing it without permission. Like we did to you. If it weren't so dangerous, I would be a voluntary host for Aftran."

"Why?" I said, staring. Strange how my surprise reaction now was to stare.

Quincy rearranged his wings nervously. Cassie said, "Listen, I have no right to say this, but... sharing your head with Tobias wasn't all bad, was it?"

And yes, Jax's ears flattened to his skull with anger, but I thought about how Tobias had uncovered all the memories I couldn't access before, how he now knew so many important and difficult things about me that I didn't have to go through the painful process of explaining. "Yeah. We, well, we understood each other. Maybe more than we needed to. But yeah."

"Hosts give Yeerks a lot," Cassie said, "but a good Yeerk can offer a lot in return."

"It's not something I'd ever choose, but I'm glad there's some way for humans and Yeerks to live as brothers. And now I have to ask – if Yeerks can be good, then why do you kill them? Why don't you just help the peace movement? Doesn't this prove there's another way?"

"I'm sorry, Loren, but most Yeerks believe in the Empire. If burglars break into your house, you don't treat them gently, even though they have the potential to be something better. If you do that, they'll still hurt the people you love. You fight back. If one of them lays down his weapon when you ask him to, you show mercy. But still, you fight back."

I stroked my thumb along the base of Jax's neck. "Are you a Christian, Cassie?"

Cassie's eyes narrowed a tiny fraction. Her mouth pressed closed, while Quincy's opened a little. So many details. I struggled to put them together. I had known all of this, once. I remembered it, like an entry in a dictionary, but I couldn't _feel_ it. _Guarded,_ said Jax. _That's what that expression is._

"No," said Cassie. "My grandparents are, but not me."

"Never mind, then."

"Why don't I show you the bird I have for you?" said Cassie, her face more open now, though Quincy still watched me oddly. She went among the rows of cages, and Quincy flew a little circle around Jax, gesturing him to follow.

I stood next to Cassie in front of a cage with a heavily sedated bird of prey. Its colors arrested me, even though they were plain as anything, sandy-beige and deep tan, because the first was patterned with mesmerizing waves of the second. "It's beautiful," I said.

"She's a prairie falcon," said Cassie. "A motorist found her out in the Dry Lands. She's sick. Intestinal parasites."

"She won't bite, then?"

"Oh no. She's way out of it. But maybe touch her at the end of her tail, just to be safe."

I reached through the bars with my finger and touched the smoothness of her tailfeathers. She barely stirred. I took in the dusty shades of her feathers, the hook of her beak, and imagined what I would be like to fly with Tobias on her wings, to see the world through those keen eyes he so often spoke of.

"Want to give it a try?" said Cassie.

I wished Tobias and Ax were here instead. But then, I didn't want to hear Tobias talk about how amazing raptor eyes were. Besides, I knew Cassie, and she was kind.

I stripped down to my morphing leotard and focused on the prairie falcon. I even spread out my arms and imagined the wind catching them. Jax laughed, but it worked: my lips became hard, like fingernails, and pushed outward from my face. Scales ran up my legs, and my toenails curved into black points. I shrank to Cassie's height, so we were briefly eye to eye, then shrank some more. Jax winked out of view, and I was down to my own eyes, which were getting impossibly sharper. I could see every crack and stain in the wood of the barn's rafters. I could read the charts attached to cages across the barn. It was too much information coming from a sense that had once given me so little. I lost my focus, and the morph stopped. I still had human ears and my feathers hadn't come in. I must have looked like a plucked chicken.

"Come on, Jaxom," said Quincy. "It's like Asair says in defense class. Keep what's important, shed the rest."

_Right,_ thought Jax. _We don't need to get caught up in the vision. The falcon mind will know how to handle it._ He imagined the clean precision of the falcon's mind, the urge to fly and hunt. My skin itched and broke out with feathers. My human ears disappeared, and hearing flooded in too, threatening to drown me with the scrabble of mice and the murmuring of caged birds. _Keep what's important,_ Jax thought, and the falcon was with us, and she wanted _out_.

There was an exit opening up, out of this too-small place. I hopped out into the open air, wings spread to catch the wind. It flowed under my wings, and I was up, up, free and safe. Tiny, now, the wooden prison that had held me. Tiny, the meadow, and to one side of it stretched wild lands, full of places to nest and mice to eat, and to the other side a sprawl of boxes and gray rivers and fenced-in greenery that –

_Is our home,_ Jax thought.

I came back to myself, and was stunned.

This was my city, Santa Barbara, as I had never known it in a lifetime of living here. I had learned my little sphere of it, as a kid. Elfangor and I left it for a little while when we went to college at UCLA, but we came back to Santa Barbara to start our lives together, and I saw more of the city than I ever had before. Then the accident – no, the Ellimist – happened, and I learned my city again from scratch, a series of soundscapes and smells and blurry monochrome impressions. And now I saw it from yet another angle, and it looked...

_Small,_ Jax said. _If it can look so small and easy to cross for a bird, then what does it look like from a spaceship?_

_We could go anywhere,_ I thought. _If this all gets to be too much, we could escape. Just fly and fly and leave all this behind._

_And leave Tobias and Ax behind?_

I circled back down toward Cassie's barn. _You're right. Of course we wouldn't. But it's nice to have that fantasy, isn't it? That idea of freedom? No wonder Tobias is so attached to being a hawk, with the life he's had..._

_Speaking of Tobias..._ said Jax, and I realized there was a red-tail also heading for the barn. I reached toward the hawk with my thoughts. «Tobias?»

«No,» replied a gravelly voice. «Toby. You must be his mother.»

«Toby,» I said. «Tobias told me about you.» I watched her enter the barn, then followed.

«Looks like I'm here early,» Toby said, settling in the rafters. I landed on a hay bale.

"I'm sure the others will be here any minute," Cassie said. "Listen, Loren, I hear my dad's car pulling into the driveway. Could you demorph in one of the empty horse stalls?"

«Sure,» I said, «but, um. I've done the morphing thing twice, and both times I came back naked. How do I get my leotard back?»

"When you make that mental image while you're demorphing, make sure you include the leotard. Not just how it looks, but how it feels."

«I don't make a mental _image_,» I muttered. I felt a little sensitive about it. I'd practiced morphing Champ at home with a leotard without Chee enhancements, and I only got it back when I demorphed two times out of three.

"Oh. Right. Duh. Well, then, make sure to include what it looks like."

I hopped in that funny bird-walk under the door to a horse stall. I knew very well what the leotard felt like, because I now wore it under my clothes every day. I saw what it looked like when I dressed and undressed. I could do this.

_This is how you look to me,_ said Jax, providing his blurry image. It wasn't terribly different from how I looked to him naked.

_No. That won't help. I should picture it the way I see myself. Anyway, I always turn off the hologram when I'm in the bedroom with curtains drawn, don't I? Because I can't live this farce every minute of every day._ So I pictured what I saw when I looked down at myself, by the glow of the lamp in the evening after I took my outer clothes off. The slight chafe marks around the shoulder straps. My breasts, their curve restrained by the elastic of the leotard. Even as I pictured it, I felt my talons soften into toes.

When it was done, I was standing in the smelly stall, and I had my leotard on. I stepped back out and pulled on my pants. "Thanks, Cassie," I said.

Jake and Marco came in as I was pulling my shirt over my head. They bickered, their dæmons wrestling playfully on the barn floor, and I wondered how I'd missed that they were best friends. _Probably because they scare you the most of all of them,_ Jax said.

The boys sat down. I took a long look at them, seeing them in full detail for the first time. Jake was tall and thickly built. His face was plain, broad with a long nose, square chin, and brown eyes. His brown hair was mostly short, with some bangs falling across his forehead. His dæmon – _Merlyse,_ Jax reminded me – changed from a goat to a wild horse, while her friend Diamanta perched on her neck as a black and white falcon with a bright red face. They joked easily with Marco and Diamanta, though there was something assured in the way they carried themselves that I wasn't used to observing in children.

There was a kind of restless energy in Marco, a contrast to Jake's steadiness. Diamanta plucked at Merlyse's mane, making her huff and toss her head. Marco's leg jogged in a rapid, unconscious rhythm as he spoke to Jake, his dark delicate eyebrows and mouth shifting with every turn of speech. There was a book I wouldn't be able to read with these eyes for a long time.

Merlyse and Diamanta noticed me staring and looked back. _They haven't seen your new face,_ Jax realized. Cassie had hidden her reaction so well the thought hadn't occurred to me. Jax thought, _Bless her for that small mercy._

"How's it going?" Merlyse asked Jaxom.

"All right," he said, and I felt my face closing off in the same way Cassie's had when I'd asked about her religion. Guarded. Jake and Marco were dangerous people. Well, all of them were, but their dangers were less known to me, and therefore more frightening.

"She just tried out her raptor morph," said Cassie. "Prairie falcon. I guess it went well, huh, Loren?"

"Yeah," I said, and I couldn't help but smile. "It was pretty cool."

Tobias flew in, then. «You tried your wings for the first time without me?»

I looked up at the rafters and laughed. "There'll be plenty of time to give me flying lessons, Tobias."

«You'd better be a good student. We've all been flying for ages. You have some catching up to do.»

«No need to worry. You're a very good flying teacher,» said Toby.

«Oh, hey, Toby! Look at you, flying down from the valley all by yourself!»

Ax came in, closely followed by Rachel. Seeing him in the same space as Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Rachel made it clear where he'd gotten his looks from. He was a blend of all their features in the most appealing combinations: Cassie's black curls loosened and lightened by Rachel's straight blonde hair, Marco's expressive feminine face with the lushness of Cassie's lips, Jake's long strong legs, and deep warm ochre skin in between all their shades of pink and brown. I could also see the resemblance between Rachel and Jake: not just their height, but also their long narrow noses, their square chins, and their small ears.

«You already showed me the way,» Toby said. «It wasn't so hard to do it again.»

"Nonetheless," said Ax, "congratulations, Toby. Cun. Gratch. Ullations. Cun-gratch-you-lations?"

«Either way is fine, Ax,» said Tobias.

"So, I guess Tobias already told you about Loren?" Rachel said.

«Yes. The seventh Animorph. Welcome, Loren.»

"Thank you, Toby," I said.

"So, you called the meeting, Toby," said Jake. "What's up?"

«I've been flying recon in the area around the valley to find out if the Yeerks have any operations going nearby. Well, they've got something out in the Dry Lands. They must have people in the military, because it looks like they're using one of their old training camps. I asked Tobias and Ax to look some stuff up on the Internet, and I think they're posing as – what do you call, private security contractors. The military lets them use their training facilities sometimes.

«I found some cover and went fly. I figured out they're using the facility to train human soldiers, but mostly to train my people. Hork-Bajir. I wanted to lead a raid to free them, but unfortunately I've had to face the fact there are too many for us to capture them all. There are hundreds. Too many for any brute force solution.»

"Any ideas for what we should do?" said Jake, and I found myself a little impressed by that reaction. Jake didn't automatically make decisions on her behalf. He'd asked for her opinion. My case really had been the exception.

«Their capabilities must be weakened before my people can strike. Perhaps you can lure away most of the soldiers somehow.»

"You're right," said Marco. "This is too big an opportunity to waste. We can't shut down the facility, but we can do long-term damage if we can kidnap enough of them."

"We can disrupt their weapon supply, maybe," said Rachel. "No Dracon beams, no learning how to fire them."

"If I can acquire some Dracon – drak-uhn – beams, I can make good use of them," Ax offered.

"We could infiltrate the troops, maybe," Jake murmured. "If we could capture some Hork-Bajir-Controllers quietly, acquire them, and replace them..."

"Then we can lure away more Controllers for Toby's people to catch," said Cassie. "But we can't just go ahead acquiring Hork-Bajir left and right without their permission."

«Yes you can,» said Toby. «If we don't capture them now, then you'll have to kill them later. You don't ask permission before you kill my people in battle, do you?»

Cassie flinched.

«The troops use latrines out in the brush,» Toby continued. «That's the best way to get them alone, I think. I don't know about the weapons supply – you'll have to help me scope it out.»

"What's a latrine?" said Rachel.

"An outdoor bathroom," Jake said. "Usually just a trench dug in the ground."

"Ew," said Rachel. "We're kidnapping Hork-Bajir while they're using the toilet?"

«My people will be doing the kidnapping,» said Toby. «Besides, we're herbivores. I'm sure human latrines are much worse.»

"I'm pretty sure that if there's one thing that all aliens from all planets have in common, it's that their shit stinks," said Marco. "So, weapons supply. We'll need to set up a watch on the facility so we can figure out how to hit them."

"Twenty-four hours," Jake said. "They might bring in shipments at two in the morning for all we know."

Everyone groaned. I looked around and saw faint bruising under Jake's and Rachel's eyes, whose skin was pale enough to show it.

"I'll take watch tonight," I offered. "Toby can show me the way."

"We don't have anywhere to be until tomorrow afternoon," Jax added, "so we can catch up on our sleep in the morning."

«I'll take the watch after Loren, and Tobias and Ax can take over for me until the rest of you get out of school,» said Toby.

"Are you sure you want to do this on your own?" Cassie asked me.

I shrugged. "It seems like a good way to start. I'd rather have my first mission just be sitting out all night looking for a supply truck than throwing myself into something really high-stakes."

_Not to mention I'm scared to fight,_ Jax thought. _I'm not sure if I can._

Everyone except Toby looked away from me, then, clenching their fists and stiffening their tails. I wondered what they were reacting to.

"You're right, yeah," Jake said stiffly. "That probably is the best way to start. Keep an eye out, and if you see a supply truck, come let me know after your watch. Perch outside my window and thought-speak, and I'll find a way to let you know I heard. Don't forget to demorph every two hours. We can give you a digital watch to wear when you're in morph."

I nodded. It wasn't as if I could forget, but I wouldn't say that in front of Tobias.

"Thanks, Toby," said Jake. "We'll meet again when we've worked out the Yeerks' logistics. We'll probably meet you up in the valley. I'm gonna stay here and study for the history test, if anyone else is up for it."

Everyone except Toby and me seemed interested in staying. I turned to leave when Cassie said, "Wait, Loren, Toby. If you're going to stand watch tonight, I need to give Loren a wristwatch, and both of you an owl morph."

"Oh!" I said, feeling heat rush to my cheeks. Jax's vision was about the same by night or day, but of course that wasn't usually true.

«Oh, yes. Tobias has mentioned that he can't see as well by night,» Toby said.

"Well, you're in luck. We have a long-eared owl who got grazed by a car while eating roadkill out on the interstate. Hey, Tobias, can you go out and check to see if my parents are back? If they see you demorphed it'll be kind of hard to explain."

«Long-eared owls,» Tobias muttered darkly. «Not much better than great horned owls, if you ask me.»

Toby glided down to a hay bale and began to demorph, doubling her size in moments. Cassie pointed out the cage with the long-eared owl. It was tawny, marbled with white and dark brown, its reddish face dominated by huge yellow eyes. It had two long tufts sticking from the top of its head like rabbit ears. I stuck my fingers through the bars and stroked one of the tufts. I imagined flying through the night on the owl's wings, when most people could not see, and stayed indoors.

I noticed Cassie opening the cage door as I acquired the owl's DNA, and in a moment I saw why: Toby's finger was too big to fit between the cage bars. I followed the clawed finger up to the scaly hand, the bladed wrist, and then it hit me, really hit me, that Tobias' friend Toby was an alien.

Jax let out a tiny giggle as Toby touched her finger to the owl's beak. _Of course she's an alien. We married an alien. Our brother-in-law is an alien._

_Not to us,_ I thought. _To us, they're just family. Now Toby... she's an alien._

_Well then,_ Jax thought, _to Tobias, she's not an alien either._

"Long-eared owls sometimes start hunting in the evening," said Cassie, "so if you're heading out, you might as well try the morph now."

I looked around the barn. Jake, Marco, and Rachel had their books out. Tobias was perched so he could see over Rachel's shoulder at the textbook she was flipping through. Abineng held the spine of the textbook upright with his nose. "Has anyone figured out how to graph a tangent curve?" Rachel said.

«Yes,» said Ax, «before my tail blade was fully grown.»

"Then come over and help me, Mr. Alien Genius," Rachel said.

_Are you sure you shouldn't stay a little longer?_ Jax suggested. _This looks like team bonding time._

_More like teen bonding time,_ I thought. _Let them be, without a fogey grown-up breathing down their necks. It's not like I even remember what a tangent curve is anyway, even with all those memories restored._

"All right, Toby," I said. "Let's have an evening, uh, stroll."

_You're ready, right?_ I thought, as I focused and saw golden brown feathers spring free of my skin. _To disappear?_

_Never,_ said Jax. But he added his own focus to the morph, and the barn grew vast around me.

The owl's vision was just as different from the prairie falcon's as it was from mine. It was completely black and white, though alive with detail, and most of all _movement._ A little wind from outside came under the barn doors and through the gaps around it, and I saw the straw on the floor stir in that tiny breath of air. Every flutter of Quincy's eyelids as he blinked was as hard to miss as a tsunami. I reeled.

_Keep going,_ Jax thought. _The owl's mind will be able to handle it. Just keep going._

I focused, calming myself into the owl's being. Then, I wasn't calm.

There were predators and prey everywhere, all in too tight a space. And another male, right beside me! I fluffed my feathers out, hopped away from him, and spread my wings. We could fight over territory later. Not here. I took off toward the square of golden light that beckoned freedom.

The other male followed me. Did he want a fight?

«Loren! Loren, are you in there? Jaxom? It's me, Toby.»

«Oh!» said Jax. «Sorry, Toby. Got a bit lost there.»

«You need to go back,» Toby said. «You need a watch so you know when to demorph.»

«Right,» I said, feeling chagrined. I flew back into the barn, over the owl's protests.

Cassie held up a digital watch. "Forgot something?"

«Sorry.»

"It's fine. Perch on my other arm."

I was worried she wouldn't be able to hold the owl's weight, but Cassie was stronger than she looked. She deftly fastened the watch around my "wrist" with one hand, and I was set.

"Good luck!" she said, waving as I took off, fully in control of myself now.

Toby was outside, flying slowly so we could catch up. «I'll pass over the valley on the way, even though we don't need to,» she said. «You probably won't remember it after one time, but you'll get the hang of it eventually.»

«Okay,» I said, falling into pace a long enough distance behind Toby that the owl's mind wasn't nervous. The world had become both huge and tiny beneath me. It struck me how big the Earth was, how big the galaxy was that held so many living things in it, and how small we were on so grand a scale. It terrified me.

«So,» said Toby. «You're Tobias' mother. Tell me: where does Tobias' name come from?»

I understood. The name was hers as well, and she wanted to know its history. «My father served in the Vietnam War,» I said. «Do you know what that is?»

«Yes. Tobias told me about it.»

«He came back... not quite right, as soldiers often do. There was a social worker in charge of his case. He didn't fix my father, not by a long shot. I don't think care for people with mental problems was as developed back then. But he did family therapy with us. He helped us keep it together enough that our family didn't completely fall apart. His name was Tobias.»

«That's good. I like that,» Toby said. «You know... I think Tobias and his friends aren't, um, quite right either. I'm not saying it's the same as what your father went through, but I've read books about war, and I think it's getting to them. But they can't see it, because they're right in the middle of it.»

«Hmm.» I wasn't sure what else to say.

«Thanks for telling me,» Jax said.

The national park opened up the flanks of low mountains. As the sun set, orange light reflected off stones and leaves. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I'd ever seen – not that I'd seen my fair share.

«Here it is,» said Toby.

«Huh?» I said. I didn't notice any valley, and with the keenness of my owl eyes, surely I would have spotted it.

«Between those two peaks, to the northeast,» said Toby.

I still couldn't see. Not in the way I couldn't see when I was blind, but because there was too much to see, and I didn't know what was important. This had happened to me more than once since I regained my vision, but how could I miss an entire valley? «There are peaks everywhere,» I said, frustrated. «Which peaks?»

«It's all right,» Toby said. «The others had trouble too, at first. Just follow me, OK? We'll pass right over it.»

I followed as closely behind Toby as I could without being obvious. I didn't know what I was looking at until, as Toby said, it was right beneath me. There were aliens swinging through the trees.

«You live in trees,» I said, amazed. I saw a Hork-Bajir make a long jump to an oak, embedding its blades into the bark to keep from sliding down. «That's what the blades are about.»

«I'm pretty sure you're the first person I know to figure that out without anyone telling you so,» Toby said sardonically. «It's definitely not what the Yeerks thought of when they first found us.»

«Mother of God,» I said. «The Yeerks made you into warriors.»

«Yes.»

_It makes me sick,_ Jax thought. _Blades made for the trees, turned to such a foul purpose._

_That's what we're doing with the morphing technology too,_ I thought. _Didn't Elfangor say once that Escafil invented it to cure_ vecols? _People like us?_

«I'm sorry,» I said. «Peace and mercy on you all.»

«That's kind of you,» Toby said. «All right, their facility in the Dry Lands is right over these mountains.»

The mountains opened out into dry scrublands. There were still a few foothills scattered here and there, and the facility was nestled in the lengthening shadow of one of them.

«Doesn't seem unusual,» I said.

«You can catch them when they go out for the latrine, or for some kind of weapons practice. Keep watching.»

We settled on top of dry, dead trees to keep a lookout. After a little while, a group of Hork-Bajir emerged from the building. They set up targets on the slope of the foothill, then fired up at them with weapons that fired pulses of red light. They looked familiar – yes, Dracon beams. I remembered with a dull horror what they could do. TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW! The pulses that missed set little fires in the scrub, and the Controllers that had to put them out swore in a mix of foul language both familiar and alien.

«How come no one catches them at it?» I wondered.

«They only come out at night. There are plenty of military installations in the Dry Lands. All anyone ever sees are the flashes of red light and the fires.»

_Right. It's night. Of course,_ said Jax. We hadn't noticed, somehow.

«I think I've got it, Toby, thanks,» I said. «You can go home now. I'll see you in the morning.»

«Goodnight, Loren.»

Jax and I were left to our thoughts – and oh, we had so many!

_Toby's right,_ Jax thought. _I think it is getting to them. We've spoken to people through the church crisis hotline who've been through less than they have. But what can we do? We can't be their collective therapist. Soon enough we might be the ones needing therapy._

_Who can they trust?_ I thought. _Who can they talk to who's safe? Who can we talk to who's safe? I have so many questions, Jax. I looked at those Hork-Bajir and thought... I thought..._

I will admit that in that moment, I had a crisis of faith. I thought about Earth and how tiny it was, and about the universe and all the different, wondrous, blessed races that lived in it, and I wondered if it was pure vanity to believe in a Redeemer who was human, and died for humanity's sins, when there was something worthy of redemption in every thinking being I had encountered.

I thought back to my days before the accident, when I had been at peace with the existence of life throughout the universe, but they were no comfort to me: I had only been a little religious, then.

_If our God is the God of humanity alone, then He is not a God I want to worship,_ I thought. _And if He is the God of everyone, then why does the Bible only speak of the creation of the Earth and the story of man? Why was the Son of God sent into the world as a man?_

_Maybe God sent His Word to other worlds in other ways,_ Jax said. _He is infinite, and our minds are limited, the mind of each race in its own way. _

_Perhaps. But then what of Christ? Did he die only for the sins of man? Or for Andalites too? And what about the Yeerks? If he died for the sins of_ everyone_, then we now go to war against our brothers and sisters in Christ._

Jax thought of the Hork-Bajir, perverted against their purpose to be weapons for the Yeerks. Had Elfangor done the same to Tobias, Ax, and their friends? To us? _Surely this is not what God intended for His creation, to discover new and beautiful life only to go to war and destroy it._

I thought, _If only we could ask Father Dupree..._

The thought of our kind old priest being a Controller made me sick, but of course he would be a prime target, holding the trust of so many. _There must be someone who is safe._

Jax remembered the Kings' house, and the leotard. _The Animorphs seem to trust them. They've helped._

White-hot rage flared behind my eyes. _Helped! Some help they've been! They could have come forward as confidantes and therapists on their own! They could help the Animorphs with their homework so maybe they wouldn't look so tired all the time! They say they won't fight, but they are no true pacifists. They're cowards who sit back and watch children bleed their lives away as they fight their war for them. It may be my duty as a Christian to step back, not to kill, but I will still help in every way that is in my power. Truly, not in half-measures as the Chee have done._

Jax thought of the parable of the talents, then. _A master gave his three servants a measure of talents, each according to his ability. The first two servants invested their talents and doubled their value, and when their lord returned, they entered into his joy. But the third servant buried his talent in the ground, and brought no good from it, and when his lord returned, he was cast out into the outer darkness._

TSEEEEWWWW. TSEEEWWWW. A fresh set of troops was out on the hillside, obliterating their targets in bursts of red light. It illuminated the gnarled shrubs of the Dry Lands and the curves of the Controllers' cruel grins so that I wondered if I had been cast out into the outer darkness myself.

But there was no wailing and gnashing of teeth, here. Only the grim efficiency of war.


	2. The Pharisees

I kept watch all night, tormented by thoughts of God, the universe, and my father waking the house at midnight as he screamed his nightmares of war. Every time I demorphed, my teeth chattered with fear that the Controllers would notice me somehow. Watching the Controllers at their training all night made me more afraid of them than I already was. Hearing them was worse.

_TSEEEWWW! "_Ghafrash nal! _A hit! That one is the_ dapsen _Andalite bandit that morphs a bird! When we_ aghrat fesh _the_ hruthin _for real, I'll blow its wing off, just like that!"_

«Loren. Loren, it's me, up on this rock. Hello?»

«Toby!» I said, startled. I looked at the eastern horizon, at the smear of bloody light there. Dawn had come without my noticing.

«Yes, Toby. How did it go?»

«Awful,» I said.

«We didn't see any supply truck,» Jax explained.

«It's all right. We couldn't have expected to get it right away. Come, demorph in this underbrush and give me the digital watch so you can go home.»

I demorphed in a patch of brush blocked from line of sight of the Yeerks by the rock Toby was perched on. The watch had an elastic band that stretched around my talon as it became an ankle. I took it off. Toby flew down from the rock and let me tighten it around her talon. It was a solemn ritual. We were both close enough to Tobias that the possibility of being trapped as a bird hovered over us like the sword of Damocles.

«Thanks,» said Toby, and flew back up to a line-of-sight perch. I morphed owl and flew back over the mountains, angling toward the city, but I was vibrating with pent-up energy despite my exhaustion, and I couldn't quite steer myself home.

_No point trying to sleep,_ Jax said grimly. _Time to pay the Kings a visit._

It was not easy to find their house. Though we'd been there before, it was hard to reconcile the voice of the bus driver calling out stops with the network of streets filling with dawn light below us. Finally, we found the bus we'd taken to get there before and followed it for a little while until we figured out the main road it followed and the cross street that led to the Kings'. We landed in a tree in their backyard. «Open your back window near the tree,» we said, our voices joined into words like flint. «We need to talk to you.»

The curtains drew back, and the window opened. It was Daniel King's bedroom, as cheery and personal as a hospital room, though with a few more dogs. We flew through and demorphed, taking care to focus on the leotard. We didn't want to ask the Chee the favor of replacing it now.

Jax watched the Chee's fake greyhound dæmon, Phiroth, with cool distaste. "Do you have a coffee maker?" I said.

"No," said the android that called itself Daniel. "We have iced tea."

"Fine," I said, rubbing the heel of my hand against my eyes. The dawn light made my brain ache. Vision wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "Get Erek. And a glass of iced tea." I turned away and went down to the living room, leaning my pounding head against the back of the armchair, Jax curled at my feet. A bloodhound had followed me downstairs, and licked at my hand before moving on.

Erek came in, his collie dæmon trailing meekly behind him, silently gave me my iced tea, and sat on the sofa. I drank greedily. I was hungry, too, but I needed the hit of caffeine and sugar more than anything. When I looked up from my empty glass, Daniel was on the sofa too. Phiroth and Damaris sat a little apart on the floor, facing me, like trained dogs, not at all like a mother and her daughter.

They were waiting for me to speak first. "What are the rules of your pacifism?" Jax said.

Erek bristled. "If you trying to get us to fight – "

"I'm not even sure if _I_ want to fight in this war," I said, pressing the cool empty glass against my forehead. "Please, just answer the question."

Daniel and Erek exchanged a look. Daniel said, "There is no simple answer to that question."

"I thought you said it was programmed into you. Programming follows rules."

"It's not programmed in the same way that a computer is programmed to display the letter A when you hit the A key," Erek said. "It's too complicated for that. It's more like... um, have you read any Isaac Asimov?"

"No," I said.

_Elfangor never liked science fiction,_ Jax added silently. _Neither did we, after everything we went through._

"Okay," said Erek. "Well, Isaac Asimov developed these Laws of Robotics as he wrote his stories. In his first robot story, the First Law of Robotics is that a robot can't harm a human. Pretty simple, like the fifth commandment in your Bible – _thou shalt not kill._ But in a later story he changed the law. 'A robot may not harm a human, or by inaction, allow a human to come to harm.' And even later he added a Zeroth Law: 'A robot may not harm humanity, or by inaction allow humanity to come to harm.' The interesting part is that he wrote stories so that robots were placed in situations where the laws became ambiguous, or where there was no clear way _not_ to violate the laws. That caused the robots something equivalent to pain. That's what the directive in our programming is like – it's an instruction, but it doesn't give us certainty in every situation."

I thought about that in silence for a minute. It made sense to me. Different branches of Christianity had different versions of the Ten Commandments, and it seemed that the laws for robots were the same. "Well, clearly you don't follow the Zeroth Law. By not fighting in this war, you are by inaction bringing harm to humanity."

"That's right," Daniel said.

"So which version of the First Law do you follow?"

"That is, in essence, the subject of the most common debate among the Chee," Daniel said. "The directive left to us in our programming is most similar to the second version of Asimov's First Law. However, our creators were a peaceful people. Preventing a Pemalite from coming to harm meant nothing more than preventing unfortunate accidents, like a life control failure on a spaceship. But humans are different. They create an internal contradiction in the First Law, because sometimes preventing a human from coming to harm means harming another human."

"And what harm would it do," I said slowly, "to help these children with their homework?"

The androids stared at me.

"How often do you see them? Erek, you go to school with them. Haven't you seen how tired they are?"

Erek blinked.

I set the empty glass on a side table with a thunk. My head was burning with pain and crystal clear all at once. "How much time do you spend with humans? Really spend, not just watching and, and _pretending_! Do you have any human friends, or are we all just part of the scenery? We may not be your Pemalites but I think we're worth your notice if you're going to share our planet. The children fighting to save this planet are suffering and you could do something about it."

Erek and Daniel both blinked and said nothing.

Jax got to his feet, laid his ears back, and scuffed his hoof along the carpet. "Are you even listening?" he snarled.

"There is an ongoing debate via CheeNet," said Phiroth.

"CheeNet?!" I cried. "All right, that's enough. I refuse to talk to you like you're human. What are your names? Your real names."

Phiroth said, "Chee-alem."

"Alem," I said.

The android who called itself Daniel King shrugged. "If you like."

Jax looked at Damaris expectantly. "Chee-naxes," she said.

"All right, Naxes. What are you talking about on your CheeNet?"

"You must understand," Naxes said through its human mouth, "that Alem and I, and the small faction we represent, are considered extremists among the Chee. Most Chee practice complete noninterference in human affairs, in the belief that humans are so violent that the only way to prevent contradictions in our programming and maintain true pacifism is to avoid involvement with them completely. They think we've gone too far by helping the Animorphs at all."

"Do you have anything to eat?" I said. "I just – I can't think right now."

"Sure. I'll make you a bowl of hot cereal," said Alem. "We'll join you at the kitchen table."

The three of us went into the kitchen, which was drenched orange-yellow with morning light, their false dæmons' claws clicking on the linoleum. Alem made me a bowl of oatmeal with honey. The kitchen was eerily silent.

As I ate, Jax thought about the Chee, and the good they might have done to mankind if only they hadn't walled themselves off. Could they really be so indifferent to human life? It didn't match with what he'd seen of Delia, but then, the empathy he saw in her could have come from Aftran.

_No, it's something else,_ I thought, watching them. I ate another spoonful of oatmeal. The food was clearing my head fast, though I still felt like I was stretched too thin, like the morning light might shine through me a little.

"So what would you do if you were standing on top of a bluff, and you saw a man at the bottom of the bluff go after a group of children with a knife? Would you throw a rock down on him?" Jax said.

Naxes and Alem recoiled with their entire bodies. It was the first real show of emotion I'd ever seen from them.

"That bothers you? A man going after children with a knife? That happens to the Animorphs all the time, and it doesn't seem to bother you then."

"We wish them only the best," Naxes said. He sounded pained. Good. I wanted him to feel something, even if it was only a tiny fraction of the worry I felt for Tobias.

"Well, if that's true, then you don't do a good job of showing it. So, what would you do? You can stop the man from killing the children, but the only way to do it is to drop that rock and kill him. Taking a life, or letting them die."

They reacted again. Alem's human face screwed up like he'd bitten into a hot pepper. Naxes leaned his head on his hand so I couldn't see his face, but his dog-form (I refused to call it a dæmon, even in my mind, anymore) whimpered.

"There's a reason you brought up the Asimov stories," Jax said. "You didn't have to explain it that way, but you did. You said that in the stories, it hurt the robots when there was no way not to violate the First Law. You're just like them. Your creators made your programming simple because they were too goodhearted to foresee a situation where the Law would become ambiguous. Ambiguous enough to make you _hurt_. Like a man attacking children with a knife at the bottom of the cliff while you stand at the top. Like children fighting a war while you stand on the sidelines."

I laughed bitterly as I caught on. "You didn't know what you were getting into when you landed on Earth. We're like torture for you, aren't we? Always presenting you with complicated moral situations your programming can't handle. No wonder you do your best not to get involved. You really are cowards."

I'd scored a hit. Alem and Naxes were not caught up in their CheeNet now. They were giving me their full attention.

"You don't know what it's like," Naxes said. "We were made to be companions to the Pemalites. Then we witnessed their destruction, helplessly, and now we can be companions to no one."

"You can," I said. "You're just too afraid. What's your pain compared to the chance that my son and his friends might die? You risk nothing and they risk everything."

Jax said, "You're like the Pharisees, who scorned Christ's message to tend to the poor and the sinners. You're so caught up in your old laws that you can't see the Law made real before your eyes."

"So what do you want us to do?" said Naxes.

"Like I said. Homework help. Car rides, when they need them. _Therapy._ They need that most of all. And anything else they might ask for that doesn't involve fighting."

"We have five volunteers within our faction," said Alem.

"Already?" I said.

"Six, now," said Naxes. "Our CheeNet is faster than your Internet."

"All right, what's your phone number? I'll ask the kids when's a good time for homework help for them, and I'll call you and let you know. I think that's the best place to start. I think they'll have a ways to go before they trust any of you as their therapists. I know that's how I feel, and I haven't had time to get properly paranoid yet."

Alem told me their phone number. I committed to memory. I got good at that during my years of blindness, when I couldn't write anything down unless I was at home with my Braille slate.

"How are they doing?" Naxes said.

"What do you think?" I said. "I only met my son six weeks ago, and the rest of them even sooner than that."

Naxes gathered a passing spaniel into his lap and stroked its neck. He looked into its eyes and sighed, then looked back up at me. "Did they tell you about David?"

My appetite for the rest of my oatmeal evaporated. Jax pressed his head against my thigh. "A little."

"He's buried in Delia and Aftran's basement. There's a grave." Naxes hugged the spaniel to his chest. The gesture chilled me. A human would have hugged his dæmon to his chest. But Damaris wasn't real. This dog, to him, was sacred.

"You're scared of them," I said.

Naxes rested his chin atop the dog's head and avoided my eyes. "Whatever you may think, we do worry about them. I know they're not all right."

"I know. I understand why they scare you." I stood up. "But you'd still better be there when I call."

"God fucking damnit," Jax said, and the hologram the Chee wove into my leotard fell over me, blacking out the brightness of the morning.

When I got home, I collapsed into bed and slept into the afternoon. It was only when I was in the shower that I realized how hard a job I had ahead of me.

"They're not going to want therapy," I said. "They learned from early in this war that they couldn't trust anybody. Then they trusted David and it was a disaster. They think they're better off handling things on their own."

Jax stuck his head around the edge of the shower curtain. "Cassie'll probably be okay with it. But she's already friends with Delia. Aftran. Whatever."

"But the others..." I rubbed my soapy hands over my face, then rinsed off the suds in the shower spray. "Wait. The Andalite military has shrinks, right?"

"Elfangor called them 'mind-body ritualists,' but yeah."

"So Ax would be used to the idea that soldiers need psychological support. Maybe we can talk him around first. He would understand that the Chee should be our allies. _Real_ allies."

"It's an idea," said Jax.

I made a late lunch, ate, then opened my bedroom window. "It'll be easier to get to Ax's woods this way," I told Jax.

"Still feels ridiculous to fly instead of taking the bus," he said. "Saves money, but is all the bone-crunching and organ-melting really worth it?"

I laughed. It really was ridiculous. "It's hard to go back though, isn't it? It'll probably take a quarter of the time to fly, judging by how long it took to get to the Chee's house. I spent the whole bus ride back here thinking about how much time I would have saved by flying."

"Like how we only keep the hologram on around the house when the curtains are open."

"That's different. It feels like lying, to have it on when I don't need to. This is... well, I don't know what it is. But I guess I ought to get used to getting from point A to point B this way." So I focused on the prairie falcon and let the changes take over.

We couldn't call ourselves eager to take to the sky, not the way Tobias always was, but the falcon was. She leapt through the window, her wings beating hungrily at the air. She was just as eager to get out of the city into the national park. When we got there, I found I couldn't really tell from this angle where Ax's scoop was, so we circled over the woods until our keen eyes caught a flash of blue.

We stooped low to get within thought-speak range. «Hello, Ax. Do you have a minute?»

He was practicing his tailfighting on a tree, splinters of bark flying everywhere. He stopped when he heard my call. «Of course, Loren.» I landed on the ground near Ax. As I demorphed, he said, «Have you heard the news?»

«No,» I said. «What – » Then my thought-speech cut out, though to my intense relief, Jax reappeared a moment later.

«The weapons truck arrived at dawn, shortly after Toby took your place. We will stand watch again tomorrow morning to see if the shipment comes daily.»

As soon as I had a mouth and a throat again, I said, "I can do it again if you want. For as long as you need me to. I assume on Sunday it should be over with before it's time for Mass."

«What is Mass? I assume you are not referring to the property of matter conferred by the central boson.»

"It's a religious ritual I go to every Sunday morning. You're welcome to come along sometime if you're interested." Never mind that I wasn't sure I still wanted to worship the God of the Bible. I couldn't stop going to Mass any more than I could stop sleeping or brushing my teeth.

«I can go this Sunday if you would like.»

"I think maybe we should give it time, so I can come up with an explanation for why I'm bringing you to Mass with me. Next Sunday?"

«If we do not have a mission, then certainly.»

"Good. I'd like that." Jax started pacing back and forth across the forest floor. The sunlight shining through the canopy of leaves dappled his stripes with shadow, making them nearly disappear into his fur. "Listen, Ax. I went to talk to the Chee today."

«The Chee?» Ax said, not bothering to hide his scorn. «Why?»

It didn't surprise me that Ax didn't like the Chee. "I don't like them either," I said. "Well, Delia seems all right, but I definitely find them frustrating. But that's not the point. I realized that they've only been doing the bare minimum as our allies."

«They provide us with valuable information.»

"At absolutely no cost to themselves. I saw the setup Delia had with Aftran. The Chee will never be caught by the Yeerks with those holograms of theirs, and even if they were caught, they can't be infested. Can't you see, Ax? They've been holding out on us."

«What more can they do? They are pacifists.» His thought-voice flung the last word like an insult. I flinched a little, then immediately hoped he didn't notice.

"All kinds of things. You've been fighting this war, you tell me what you do that doesn't involve fighting. But I had an idea. Elfangor told me about the mind-body ritualists you have on your homeworld. The military still has those?"

«Ah,» said Ax. «Yes, of course.»

"This war is... hard on all of us. I think we could all use something like that. Do you get what I'm saying?"

«Yes. My cousin, Calif-Elmand-Keresh, who mentored me during my training... well, all Andalite warriors are required to consult a mind-body ritualist at least once per deployment, but Calif saw his more frequently. I remember how he was when he missed a consultation. He became... unmoored. Distracted. Yes, Loren, you are right. I was... foolish not to have seen it before.»

I knew, just knew, that he had been about to say "blind" instead of "foolish," but I let it pass. At least he'd corrected himself. "Especially since the whole David incident, I bet," I said softly.

«Yes.» Ax scuffed his hoof along the ground. «I am skeptical that the Chee are a suitable substitute for mind-body ritualists. They do not know what war is like. They do not understand the minds of soldiers. And in my case, they know nothing of Andalites and our ways of keeping mind, body, and spirit in harmony. Only a certified Andalite military ritualist could teach me the rituals I need to ease the burden I bear.»

"You don't trust them," I said. "I get it. I don't really trust them either. But they're all we've got. I'd rather talk to someone who has some chance of helping than just keep it all bottled up."

«I think my cousin would agree with you. But it will be no simple matter for the Chee to gain our trust.»

"Well, I thought they could get started by helping the kids who go to school with their homework. Lord knows they look exhausted just talking about it. And I hoped that you could help me talk them around. I didn't think you'd be thrilled, any more than I am – I mean, I'm not jumping up and down to talk about my problems with a robot older than the Bible – but I thought you might understand a little better than the others."

Ax considered this for a moment. «Very well. We will be meeting soon to discuss our plans. Tobias and I meant to fetch you. I will bring up the matter then.»

"Thank you," I said. "Hey, Ax. Can you tell me about your cousin Calif? I'd like to hear more about your family. Elfangor talked about Forlay and Noorlin, of course, but he never mentioned his cousins except in passing."

«I am not surprised. Our cousins are younger than him. He would not have seen them for a long time, and they would have been children then. Their names are Calif-Elmand-Keresh, a cousin from my mother, and Menged-Esthoun-Tirehar, a cousin from my father. They are brave and capable warriors. When the Andalite force comes to Earth, they will almost surely be a part of it.»

"They were close to you when Elfangor couldn't be," I guessed.

«Yes. It happens to cadets who do not have older brothers, or whose older brothers are too high up in command to spend much time with _arisths._»

"I'm sorry. He should have been there for you anyway."

«I said as much to my cousins when I was younger. They told me his duties were more important. I would have said the same, until I learned of my relationship to Tobias. I could not imagine any duty more important than being his uncle. I am committed to him and this war both.»

"You're right, Ax. You're right. I know this is hard for you to hear, but Elfangor isn't a hero. He, well. Like I said. The Visser infested Alloran on his watch. And look what he did here on Earth. Gave his son, his little brother, and four human children responsibility for an interstellar war. Not exactly a family man. Lord Almighty, I hate him for that."

«Then what should he have done?»

"I don't know. I don't know!" Jax kicked his back hoof against a tree in sheer frustration. I felt tears start to overflow the boundaries of my eyes. My vision blurred. Crying had never done that to me before. "Sweet Jesus, anything but what he did. Look what he did to you. You had to murder another child. Oh, Ax. It's hurt me just to see what that's done to you."

«You are very kind-hearted, to see them this way after what they did to you.»

"I understand. It scares me half to death, but I understand. What if I had turned out like David? They would have had to kill me, and what would that have done to you and Tobias? It would have destroyed you."

«You are _nothing_ like David,» Ax said passionately. «He was a coward. You are strong.»

"So is the Visser," I said, wiping my tears with the back of my hand.

«He isn't. I fought him, blade to blade, and he turned tail and ran. He was afraid.»

I gave a watery laugh. "Just like your brother. The Visser was scared of him too."

«Yes.» Ax smiled with his eyes, in that way that Andalites have. What a joy it was to see that smile again. «Oh. Cassie wanted me to bring you to the barn early. She said it would be good for you to practice morphing an insect when there are people to watch out for you.»

"Right. You morph insects. That makes sense. Though I don't think Elfangor ever mentioned anything like that. His only morphs were kafit bird, Taxxon, and human."

«He had a _Taxxon morph_?» Ax said, horrified, as we began to walk toward Cassie's barn.

"He was there for the Taxxon rebellion. We were there. I thought you already knew that."

«Yes, but I didn't know he _morphed_ a _Taxxon._»

"He did! He nearly ate me before he got control of the morph. He said it was awful. I bet it was. And poor Arbron..."

«His friend Arbron? You knew him as well?»

"Yes. He was funny. I liked him." I smiled sadly. It all felt so far away now, like a dream, except for Ax right there beside me to prove it was all real. "He stayed in Taxxon morph too long. He got trapped. We don't know what happened to him after that. Probably died in the Taxxon rebellion."

«He... what? Elfangor said... his family was told that he was killed in action.»

"It's probably better that way. Kinder to his family. It's hard to imagine a fate worse than what he was dealt."

«He lied to me so much,» Ax whispered. «Do the lies never end?»

"I think he told me the truth. I'll tell you what I can. But I guess there are no guarantees. There's a lot I wish I knew about him, too."

«We are getting close to the barn. I must morph. You may go ahead. Cassie will have an insect ready for you to acquire.»

"All right. I'll meet you there."

Cassie was in the barn, cleaning cages. Next to her, she had a fly trapped under a small jar. I watched it buzz ineffectually against the glass walls of its prison. Quincy pricked up his ears and noticed me. "Hello," he said.

"Hi," Jax said. "Ax told me that you wanted us to get some morphing practice."

Cassie put her rag and her cage down and turned around. "Yeah. Morphing an insect is scary the first time. Every time, really, but the first morph is the hardest."

I slid the jar over my hand so the fly was trapped on my palm. "I'm not scared," I said, the fly's wings going still as I focused on the facets of its red eyes. "Elfangor's dæmon was a bee."

Quincy watched the fly. "A honeybee?"

The acquiring trance broke, and I let the fly buzz away. "No, an orchid bee. Much prettier, if you ask me." I took a deep breath and thought about the wings of the fly, the way their iridescence caught the light.

_Beautiful,_ Jax thought. _Every living thing on this Earth is so beautiful. Even a fly._

I began to shrink. Antennae erupted from my head, and Jax disappeared from sight. Quincy said, "What was her name?"

«Hala Fala,» Jax said, marveling at Quincy's ability to carry on a conversation while one half was currently experiencing their mouth melting into a proboscis. «OK, I'm not scared, but this is _gross_.»

"Watch out for the eyesight," said Cassie, though her voice was fading into fuzziness with every second. "It's... different. So is the hearing."

«Noticing that,» I muttered. I was down at the scale where the hay on the floor looked like fallen logs. Then my vision exploded, and they didn't look like anything but fragments. The world was a kaleidoscope. «Aah!»

_At least we don't have to see our own legs anymore,_ Jax said. _They were getting all... jointed. And bristly._

_This is much worse than not being able to see,_ I thought, as wings shot out of what had been my shoulders, but were now shiny black carapace. _This is just nonsense. Lots of tiny pictures that don't mean anything._

My waist pinched tightly, and then _oh_, there came the fly mind. It wasn't bothered with vision at all. It was focused on the smells, and to the fly, the horse manure in the barn smelled very good. Before we even knew what was happening, we were airborne. A sound was booming somewhere above us, but it didn't matter.

_Wait a second,_ Jax thought. _We're flying. Whoa, whoa, we're flying! And that's Cassie talking!_

_Wow, yeah. This is different from owl or falcon flying, but it sure is flying._ We spun in wild circles. _Focus. What is she saying?_

I realized the sounds had a shape, and then the shapes became familiar. "Jaxom, can you hear me? Jaxom?"

«Present,» said Jax. «You're right. This does need some practice. I wouldn't have wanted to do this for the first time with Yeerks around.»

"The others will be coming soon. If you've gotten the hang of it, you can demorph."

I definitely didn't want to be half-fly when they came in – no one should have to see that – so I directed myself toward the ground again and demorphed. It was getting easier all the time to visualize, not just feel, the shape of my own body. I'd spent enough time looking in the mirror that I didn't look like a stranger to myself.

Ax and Tobias came in just as my antennae were withering away. «How'd the fly morph go?» Tobias said.

"Fine. Confusing, but fine."

Cassie laughed. "That's better than any of us handled it."

Jake and Marco came into the barn together, shoving at each other like little boys. It was hard to imagine taking orders in battle from this smiling teenager my son's age.

_Never forget that he gave the order to have us infested,_ Jax said. _He's a general. And anyway, we promised._

They settled onto hay bales, Diamanta curled loosely as a huge python around Merlyse's horse leg. Cassie looked around the barn. "Used to be that six of us meant that the meeting could start. Now we have eight Animorphs, kind of."

«Seven,» said Toby, in red-tailed hawk morph, coming in for a landing in the rafters near Tobias. «Just because I have the morphing power doesn't make me an Animorph. It makes me a Hork-Bajir with some extra tricks up my sleeve.»

"You don't have a sleeve," Marco said. "Even there were a shirt big enough for you, it'd be ripped to shreds as soon as you put it on."

«It's not my fault your language is so anthropocentric.»

"Anthropo-what?" said Marco.

"Someone hasn't been paying attention in English class," said Rachel, closing the barn door behind her.

"Oh yeah, like you love Romeo and Juliet. A couple of dumb kids get themselves mixed up in a war between two groups that are way bigger than them and get themselves killed. Sounds way too much like our lives."

"That's actually a pretty good synopsis," I said. "Most people just think it's about love."

"You better shut your mouth now, Marco, or Loren might think you're smart or something," Rachel said.

"I'm sure my son is friends with only the wittiest of people," I said.

«I have to keep up my reputation as the world's smartest hawk,» said Tobias.

Jake and Marco laughed, leaning back on their hay bales.

«Do you have a plan for how to hit the facility, Jake?» said Toby.

It was as if a switch had been flipped: Jake was all business now, Merlyse a dignified and sober sage grouse. "I have an idea," said Jake. "Maybe it's stupid, but it's an idea."

"Don't tell us it's stupid in advance," said Marco. "Let us discover its stupidity for ourselves."

Merlyse pecked Diamanta, who sulkily turned into a chameleon in all drab brown.

"We have two goals here," Jake said. "One: to help Toby free as many of her people as she can. Two: to get our hands on some Dracon beams. Ax says he can do all kinds of things with them. Set traps. Use the power sources to make other things. So I think we should split up. Team A morphs Hork-Bajir, pretends to be Controllers, and infiltrates the facility. They lure out as many Controllers as they can to whatever spot is best for Toby. Team B goes after the truck with the weapons."

"I call Team B," said Rachel instantly. Abineng tossed his head like he was ready to put his horns in something.

«Ax and I should be on Team A. We've spent the most time with the Hork-Bajir. We can probably do the best impressions of Hork-Bajir-Controllers,» said Tobias.

"Hang on one second," said Marco. Dia was on his shoulder as a bright-eyed raven, watching Toby keenly. "Toby, what was this truck like? I'm betting it wasn't a rented U-Haul."

«It was big. It looked heavily armored. There were two human-Controllers in the front, though there could be Hork-Bajir-Controllers inside. They unloaded the truck in a garage inside the facility, so I couldn't see.»

"Firepower," said Rachel. "Like we did at the world leaders' summit. Armored trucks aren't built to keep out rhinos and elephants."

«There's a problem,» said Tobias. «What do you do once you break into the truck? How do you carry the weapons to a place where we can get them?»

"We'd have to hit the truck before it gets to the facility," said Jake. "Closer to the mountains, where the tree cover is thicker. We could hide the weapons and come back for them later."

"We'd need a go-between," Cassie said. "An eye in the sky who can watch over what both teams and the Hork-Bajir are doing and help coordinate everything." Did Quincy give me a glance just then?

«I'll be busy as a fake Controller,» Tobias said.

"I think Loren should do it," Jake said.

"Me?" I said. "I don't think I'm a very good eye in the sky. I don't think I'm good at having eyes at all yet."

"Maybe," said Jake. "But I remember when we had our first battle. We had no idea what we were getting into. I want you to be better prepared. If you're our scout, then you can watch the fighting and see what it's like before you do it yourself."

Jax was hit by a wave of gratitude. It seemed to him that Jake maybe knew about our doubts about whether we were ready to kill. He wanted to ease us into this instead of dumping it on us all at once. It was kind, in its own way.

"All right," I said. "I'll do my best."

"Three teams, each doing their own thing," said Marco. "I hate when we split up. I thought the point of having seven Animorphs was that I'd have _more_ people there to save my butt."

"We're not all here just to save your butt, Marco," Rachel said. "I heard there was a planet that we might wanna save too."

"But would the planet even be worth living in without me?" said Marco, twirling snake-formed Diamanta around his fingers.

"So that's it?" I said. "It's settled?"

"Well, we need to stake out the facility some more to find out if it comes at the same time, or whether it comes every day or less than that," said Jake. "I'll call when we do the mission based on that."

"I can help with that some more," I said. "I'll go again tonight. I can use all the practice being an owl."

«Thank you,» said Toby. «Then I will relieve you at dawn, as before. Here, take the digital watch back.» She flew down to a hay bale beside me. Once I had it off, she said, «If we're decided, I'll fly back to my meadow now.»

Everyone waved goodbye to Toby. Abineng nudged open the barn door, and she flew off.

"I should take you to the Gardens to get a battle morph tomorrow," Cassie told me. "I know you're not supposed to fight this time, but it's good to have that morph just in case."

"I'll meet you at the Gardens after school," I said.

«And I need to give you flying lessons,» Tobias said to me privately. «You're going to learn how to be a Bird Scout from the best.»

Ax stood up. "I have some business – bizzzzzness – to discuss."

Everyone looked at him, surprised. I'd nearly forgotten he was there. I guess Ax doesn't talk much at meetings.

"I spoke with Loren," he said, "and from what she has said, I believe – bee-leave-uh – that we have not used the Chee as allies to their full potential. Tenshul."

Merlyse became a horse, filling the space in front of Jake, ears pricked toward Ax. "What do you mean?" Jake said.

"There are a variety, tee, of support functions in any military that do not involve direct combat. Logistics. Jist. Ix. Transportation. Medicine. Mind-body ritualism."

I coughed. "We don't call it that, Ax."

"Support for the soldiers. Jers. So they can be their best. This is important. The Chee could do these things."

"Like what?" said Rachel.

"Transport us safely to and from locations when bird morphs are inconvenient, using holograms for cover. Impersonate you at school when you are too tired to attend. Help you with your schoolwork. Provide support for our minds and spirits, if we come to trust them that far."

"So you're saying the Chee should do my homework for me and help me play hooky," Marco said. "Loren, this was partly your idea? I thought you were a responsible adult."

"I'm definitely not pro-cheating or playing hooky," I said. "But I make special exceptions for teenagers who have to save the world in their spare time."

"Support for our minds and spirits?" Rachel said. "Are you saying the Chee could be our _shrinks_?"

"Yeah, Erek's not exactly someone I want to spill my guts to," Marco said. "And besides, I don't need a shrink."

«Me neither,» said Tobias.

"I think it's a great idea," said Cassie. "I could talk to Delia and Aftran. And you don't have to talk to Erek. There are more Chee out there than just them."

"I talked to Erek and Daniel," I said. "Their real names are Naxes and Alem, by the way. I asked them about it. They said there are nine other Chee willing to help. They said we could call anytime, and as long as it's not something that goes against their programming, they'll send someone to do whatever we need them to."

"Did you tell them we're, like, troubled kids or something? That we need _help_?" Marco said. Diamanta flared her cobra hood at Jax.

"Calm down, everyone," Jake said. "Ax is right. Human armies are the same. They have psychological support for all the soldiers. It's not like they single out the psychos. It's just that war affects everyone. We know that. I still don't think it's a great idea for us to spill all our deep dark secrets to the Chee. I don't trust them that far. But I'll give them a chance."

Merlyse dipped her elegant head to look at Jax. "You say the Chee would come over whenever we call them. Well, let them prove it. We have homework to do. Let's call them and tell them to come over right now."


	3. Plowshares into Swords

"Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong."

- Joel 3:10

Loren told Cassie the Kings' number. She repeated it back to her, then went into her house to use the phone. She came back a few minutes later with her bookbag and nodded. "Erek says they're coming." And with that, she settled on a hay bale next to me and took her books out.

Merlyse cleared her throat. "Thanks," she said to Jaxom. "For trying to get the Chee to help. Even if it doesn't work out, well, it was worth a shot."

I was surprised at her for saying that. She said, _You shouldn't be. This is part of where we went wrong with David. She's new to this. She needs extra encouragement._

"Yeah," said Quincy, flashing a fanged smile at Jaxom. "Thanks."

Loren stared at me, Jaxom at Quincy. Her stare was intense. Not like the hawk laser-eye you get from Tobias in human morph, but more like how you squint at a really hard question on a test.

Merl became a sage grouse and hopped up between Marco and me. Dia flicked her long chameleon tongue against Merl and grumbled a wordless complaint. Whether it was about the Chee in specific or homework in general Merl couldn't be sure. It was really for Marco and Dia's sake, though, that I was even willing to consider the possibility of using the Chee for therapy or whatever. They needed it. Marco was still more paranoid even than normal, quizzing me on whether I thought some teacher or another might be a Controller, and Dia couldn't joke around with the other dæmons in class as much as she used to.

"I do not have homework, kuh," Ax said, "but I would like to stay. I wish to see what the Chee will do."

"I would like it if you and Tobias and Loren could stick around a while," I said. "I want to hear what you think."

Tobias and Loren nodded. I took out my backpack and flipped to the chemistry section of my binder. I could get started on the easy problems, at least. As I worked, Merlyse kept her attention on the barn door. When she heard a knock, she turned into a horse and nudged the door open with her nose.

There was no one there.

"Could you get out of the way, please, Merlyse?" came a voice from the empty evening air. It was Erek.

"Oh," she said. "Right. Sure." She backed up, then turned into a sage grouse again to take up less space.

Once the Chee were inside, they turned off their holograms. Well, the ones that made them invisible, anyway – they all looked human. There were five of them: Erek, Delia, and two women and an old man I didn't recognize. The old man stood out as the only one among them who didn't have a dog dæmon. The hologram of his dæmon was a grizzled coyote, gray peppering her brown fur just as gray twined in thick strands through the man's black dreadlocks.

"Hi, everyone," said Erek.

"Hi," we said, with different degrees of enthusiasm.

"Let me make some introductions," Erek said. He gestured at the younger woman, who looked kind of tattered but had an elegant Afghan hound for a dæmon. "This is Lourdes Portero and Euscavier." Then he gestured to the older woman, who had striking green eyes in her bronze face and a huge black Newfoundland dæmon. "Safiya Malek and Rakhamet."

The old man stepped forward and introduced himself. "I'm Luis Javier Turner, and this is Zefirita."

"I thought we might pair off with the people we pretended to be when you were away at the North Pole," Erek said. "Since we know you the best."

It was a little creepy, but I was willing to accept it. I nodded. I wondered which of the Chee had impersonated me. Whoever it was had really got me ahead on my chores.

It was Luis who came up to me and held out his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Jake."

I shook it. Merlyse became a coyote, too, and sniffed at Zefirita's face. Zefirita sniffed back. It felt like the thing to do, even if Zefirita was a hologram. "Uh, hi," Merl said. "Thanks for doing all those chores."

"Least I could do," said Zefirita.

"What do you need my help on, Jake?" said Luis.

I pointed at my problem sheet. "Know anything about chemistry?"

Luis sat on a stack of hay bales lower than mine, so his face was closer to my binder. "Plenty. What's giving you trouble?"

"Well, okay. I do fine on simple questions, but word problems always confuse me. 'Which molecule takes the most energy to break down: N2, O2, or F2?'"

"So what makes a molecule hard to break down?" said Luis.

"Well, I guess if the bonds between the atoms are really strong," I said.

"Sure," said Luis. "So what affects how strong the bonds are?"

"Well, there's the size of the atoms, right?"

"That's true. So flip to the table in your textbook with the atom sizes and check."

I checked. "They're all about the same size. I mean, there's a difference, but not very much."

"Okay, let's think of something else, then," said Luis. "What else affects how strong the bonds are?"

"How many there are."

"Right. So let's figure out how many bonds there are between the atoms in these molecules."

He watched me draw out the diagrams for the molecules, giving me pointers a couple of times. I looked at the diagrams. N2 had a triple bond connecting the two nitrogen atoms. "That's the answer," I said, pointing at nitrogen. "That's the only one with a triple bond, so it would be the hardest to break apart."

"That's it," said Luis. "In fact, that's the reason why whole battles in World War II were fought over tiny islands of bird guano."

"What?" I said. I'd been reading a lot about war, and I remember reading about how some of the battles were fought over tiny islands, but I didn't see what that had to do with the triple bonds in nitrogen gas.

"Well, the nitrogen in living things is found in molecules that are much easier to break down, like nitrate. Can you draw the diagram for nitrate?"

I did. It had a few mistakes, which Luis corrected. "It's all single bonds between the nitrogen and the oxygen atoms," I said.

"Right. Which is exactly why both sides in World War II wanted it so badly. In the 50s they invented a way to convert nitrogen and hydrogen gas into ammonia, though, which meant they didn't need to fight over islands of guano anymore."

"Ammonia," I said. "That's NH3, right?" I drew the diagram for it. "All single bonds, just like nitrate. I get it."

We did some more problems. They got easier and easier for me to understand as they went. Luis used examples that made everything feel real and not useless, like when he talked me through a question about the density of gases by telling me about the hydrogen gas the Germans used in their zeppelins.

When we were done, I put my pencil down and looked Luis in the eye. I said, "You know a lot about World War II."

"I should hope so," said Luis. "I was there."

"How? You can't fight."

"There's more to war than fighting. I treated combat fatigue in the soldiers."

"My Grandpa G fought in World War II," I said. "Gilbert Berenson. Did you ever treat him?"

"Right, Grandpa G. Your father mentioned him when I was acting your part." Luis shook his head. "They wouldn't have sent him to me. I only saw the colored soldiers."

Merlyse noticed that Marco was finishing up his homework, and Diamanta was listening to our conversation with some interest.

"Some of them still could have used my help after the war, but the military didn't pay for it anymore, so they were on their own. Managed to stay in touch with a couple after the war. Civilian life didn't treat them kindly when they got back. Three years with the finest technology the nation had to offer, fighting with their brothers, risking their lives for this country, only to come back to life as a second-class citizen."

"I can't imagine what that's like," I said. I didn't get any recognition for everything I sacrificed for this war, but at least I was treated the same as anyone else my age.

"That better not happen to us," said Marco. "I want the full hero treatment when we win this war. Parades, fanfare, my name up in lights."

"I do hope this country is more ready for a hero of your color now than it was in 1945. Whether it's ready or not, you could be an inspiration to a lot of people."

Marco blinked. I don't think he was expecting a serious answer. "Hey, it's not like I have some big message to send to the world once I'm famous. Maybe just 'Stop fighting each other, guys, because guess what, war sucks.' Like anyone's ever listened to the zillions of people who've said that before."

"Who knows?" said Luis. "Maybe it'll carry more weight coming from someone who helped save the whole planet. It's an admirable goal, at least."

Marco and I went quiet. We don't think much about life after the war. It seems too far away, and it's scary too, in its own way. Sometimes the only way I make it from day to day on not enough sleep is to think about what will happen next in the war. It takes up so much of my brain. When it's over, what will be left?

"You're right," said Merlyse. "I think it's a good thing, to have a wish about what will happen after, even if it's kind of stupid. It's something to hope for."

"_Done_," Rachel declared, setting her textbook on the ground with a loud thud. "Finally. Thanks, Lourdes."

I looked around at the barn. Cassie and Delia were talking with their heads close together, obviously done with work. Erek, finished helping Marco, was talking to Ax. Loren was in a corner, deep in conversation with Safiya.

I raised my voice. "Thanks for your help, everyone." They all turned to look at me. "I think I'm speaking for most of us when I say that I'm going to bed about an hour and a half earlier than I thought."

Marco, Cassie, and Abineng nodded.

"We'd like to talk privately now," I went on, "but I'm pretty sure we'd like to do this again. What do you think?"

"We'll come when you call," Erek said. For a second I was surprised he didn't ask the others for confirmation, but then, they were androids. The other Chee had probably beamed him their answers in a fraction of the time it would have taken to talk. It was easy to forget that.

The Chee started to go. Diamanta said quietly to Zefirita, "One question. If it's not, too, uh – why aren't you a dog like the others?"

Zefirita shook her head. "Some other time."

When the Chee were gone, I said, "What do you think?"

"Getting homework help from Erek was just _weird_," Marco said. "In school he doesn't do so well. But it really is all just an act. He's a billion years old and way smarter than me."

"Luis was OK, though," Dia said.

_High praise coming from Dia,_ Merl noted.

"It creeps me out that Lourdes pretended to be me," Rachel said. "But like Marco said. She's way smart. I like the idea of sleeping more. Spending more time with my sisters. My work would have taken twice the time without her. At least."

"And you had a good time, Cassie?" I said.

Cassie smiled and nodded. "With Aftran? Of course. I think Ax is right. I'm going to see her more often so I can get some weight off my chest about everything we've gone through. I think it'll be good."

I fidgeted a little. _It is probably good for her,_ Merlyse thought. _For us. We don't have to spill our guts out, but Luis could be a friend. An adult friend who knows about the war. We could talk about World War II. Nothing too personal._

_Maybe._ I said, "OK, everyone. I'll get the word out about the mission once we know more. When is everyone free for another homework session?"

#

I went to the Dry Lands and watched the Yeerk facility in owl morph again all night. It gave me time to think.

Of everything I had seen and remembered since Tobias first came to my house two months ago, Safiya Malek – no, Chee-koril – was the hardest to believe. I wouldn't have believed it if Jax hadn't reminded me a hundred times that I had had a baby with an alien, so I didn't have much of a right to be skeptical.

Koril had lived in Damascus at the same time as Saint Paul. She was an android created by aliens, and she had been a Christian for 1800 years.

_They,_ Jax corrected me. _They said that being a man or a woman was their human persona, not their true self._

_Right, they,_ I said. _They observed the founding of the Catholic Church – there's so much I want to talk about!_

_Maybe we can ask them,_ Jax thought, wincing internally as the Controllers' Dracon beams set a dead tree alight. _If they believe in Jesus, then maybe he really is the Savior of all people, not just us. Maybe we can fight for the freedom of all in His name..._

The truck never came. Just before dawn, I passed the watch to Toby and flew home to sleep.

I woke up in the afternoon, and only after I showered was I alert enough to remember I was supposed to meet Cassie at the Gardens after school. I touched my Braille watch. There was just enough time, if the bus didn't run late.

Cassie raised her voice to greet me as I approached the gates to the Gardens. I was glad she did; it was hard for Jax to pick out anyone specific in the crowd. He noticed her watching, though, as I paid for my ticket, riffling through bills precisely folded so I could tell apart their value by touch.

"No news from our friend Toby," Cassie said as she led me to a door that opened to the access corridors behind the exhibits. "You don't have to be on duty tonight, though. Tobias volunteered."

"Thanks. I'm getting a bit worried I'll become permanently nocturnal if I keep this up too long."

"You will. Trust me." She unlocked the door and entered the access corridor. "Thought about what you want to see back here?"

I flinched a little. I'd thought about it during the long night. What it would be like to have a blade like Elfangor's and use it to slit a Hork-Bajir's throat. "Is there a – a snake or something that paralyzes with its venom? I'd rather not kill anyone if I..."

Cassie's face went very grim. "No, Loren. There isn't. And you don't want that. First off, attacking someone with your _mouth_ is... look, I think we have something in common there. Neither of us wants to do that."

I hadn't thought about that. She was right. I swallowed. "OK. You're right. Nothing where I have to use my mouth. But is there something that can just take them out? Without killing?"

She shook her head. "I tried that. With wolf morph. I thought it would be better that way. But it isn't. The Yeerks have no use for a paralyzed or maimed host. They kill them anyway. Better to do it quick, so they don't have to suffer."

I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to shut out imagined screams in my head. Yes, of course the Yeerks wouldn't want a _worthless_ host. Worthless like I used to be, like my friends in the low-vision support group still were. That shut out the screams with relief. None of my blind friends were Controllers. "OK. OK, fine. You're the expert. What do you recommend?"

"There's an American bison recovering from surgery," Cassie said. "She's still sedated, so she should be safe to acquire. But she's dangerous, make no mistake. She can gore with her horns and trample with her hooves. They're said to be more dangerous to a hiker in the wild than grizzly bears. And they're herd animals. Protective, not predatory. You might like those instincts better."

Jax butted at my hand. _What do you think?_

Something about this decision felt momentous. So much of the hawk came through in Tobias, and Cassie had been deeply affected by her choice of battle morph in the past. What did my choice say about me? I didn't know. "Sure," I said. "Lead on."

The air took on the sharp tang of disinfectant as we entered the veterinary wing. One of the vets said, "Oh, hello there, Cassie. Your mama isn't here right now. She's in a meeting."

"Oh, that's all right," Cassie said. Quincy fluttered down from her shoulder and settled on the base of Jax's neck. "I'm not here to see her. I'm doing some volunteer work at St. Theresa's. Loren here loves animals, but she can't see them, of course, and I thought it would be really nice to give her the chance to touch the bison in recovery right now."

Quincy whispered in Jax's ear, "Sorry about this. We figured the 'poor blind lady' angle would be the best way to get you in."

Jax almost asked how they knew that I worshipped at St. Theresa's, until I remembered with a chill that they had all spied on me. Of course they knew my church.

"I guess it's all right if you're there to keep on eye on things," the vet said. "Just don't touch her face or the surgical site, OK, ma'am?"

"I understand," I said quietly, trying to project 'meek pitiable blind lady.' I'd used the façade many times before to get what I needed from people. It always made me feel dirty, and it made me feel even dirtier now. Cassie took my hand and led me on. I felt ridiculous, like a child; I could get around just fine without someone holding my hand, but then, it would give the right impression to the vet. Cassie was good at this. Scary good.

The bison lay on her side in a semi-open area, her great chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Hay crunched beneath our feet as we approached her. The bandaging on her side was a sharp white contrast to her dark fur.

"She's huge," I said.

"Weighs nearly a ton," Cassie agreed. "And the horns are two feet long."

I knelt beside her and touched her neck, feeling the enormous hard muscle under the coarse-furred skin. I imagined being her, the head of the herd, protecting the little ones from wolves. I could hear in my mind what my voice would sound like, resonating low in my chest. I saw the outlines of the big, blunt hooves she walked on, and thought of using them to kick bones to fragments, turning plowshares into swords. It was hard to tell when the acquiring trance was over, since the bison was sedated anyway. I gave it a while just to be sure.

"There you go," Cassie said. I got up, and she took my hand again. "Sorry. Just another minute of this."

I gave my humble thanks to the vet, who felt she'd done a good deed, no doubt, by letting a blind woman finally experience the wonders of wildlife. As if I hadn't been to the Gardens before, and listened, enraptured, to the lyrebirds singing each to each.

When we left the veterinary wing, Jax hissed to Quincy, "You have to _warn_ us before you pull something like that!"

Quincy shifted uncomfortably. "Sorry. I thought it would be OK."

"It is OK, but still, that shouldn't come out of left field!"

"Sorry..." Quincy flew back to Cassie's shoulder.

"Well, you got the job done," I admitted. Cassie opened the door, and sunshine warmed my face. "I'll take the bus to your house with you. I'm going to visit Tobias."

"Any news from Toby?" Jax whispered to Quincy on the bus.

"I haven't heard anything. You'll have to ask Tobias."

After a pause, Jax said, "Thanks. For the advice. We were trying to make judgments about things we don't understand."

"I'm just glad you get to learn these things the easy way. Whatever mistakes you make, we've probably made them before."

Jax was struck silent by that, because it made Quincy sound so old, though he was so young.

At the bus stop, I waved goodbye to Cassie and set out toward the woods beyond her home. Tobias saw me before I saw him, of course. «Hi, Loren!»

I still got a pang when he said that. Other children called their mothers "Mom." But then, Jax often reminded me, it didn't make much sense for him to yell, «Duck, Mom!» in the middle of a mission. It would only remind him of how much he now had to lose. Anyway, he probably wasn't used to the idea of having a mother in the first place.

"Hi, Tobias," I said, smiling in the direction I was mostly sure he was. "How are you?"

«I'm all right. Last night was interesting, huh?»

"Definitely."

«Toby said you didn't see anything last night. She didn't see anything either. Ax is out there watching now.»

"I'm sure we'll catch them at it again," I said. "So, how about a flying lesson?"

«Sure!»

I smiled. Tobias' enthusiasm for flying was infectious, even if I found flying more scary than fun. I focused on the long-eared owl I'd already morphed twice by now. It wasn't any less strange.

«Oh,» said Tobias, as the long feathery tufts sprouted from my head. «You're morphing the owl.»

"That's the morph I'll be using for the mission, right? Makes sense to practice with it."

«I hate owls,» Tobias grumbled, and Jax wanted to laugh a little but it was so sad that Tobias had to deal with owls as a serious concern in his life that he couldn't laugh at all.

I got that disconcertingly sharp vision again, and Jax disappeared from sight, and then the owl mind spurred me up and up through the trees.

«Feel this headwind?» Tobias said, tacking upward. «Pay attention to the wind. It's your best bet flying at night, since there are no thermals. This headwind is helping you take off, but it'll slow you down soon because it's blowing in your face. We might want to turn around so the wind is with us, not against us.»

I focused on the sensation of wind ruffling the feathers on my face and wings. He was right. It was blowing against me, maybe a little from my left. But it was also subtler than that: it curled into vortices above my wings, splitting and shifting around the contours of my body.

_That's amazing,_ Jax said. _That openness, the flow of wind above and below and all around._

And in that moment, focusing on the complex contours of air flowing around me instead of the constant stream of painfully bright detail assaulting my eyes, I finally began to love flying.

«Let's go!» I said, banking around on my wing, reveling in the way the air moved as I scooped it with powerful strokes. The wind was with me now, increasing my speed. Tobias pulled ahead of me in moments, but I didn't care. The sky was an ocean, thick with currents, and I could navigate it more neatly than an Olympic swimmer, if I put my mind to it.

«Less flapping,» Tobias said. «We're not in a rush. You'll just tire yourself out. You only need to flap when there's no wind, or you're doing a maneuver.»

«What's a maneuver?»

«Like this.» Tobias dove, tucking his wings precisely, and grabbed an acorn from an oak tree in his talon.

«Show-off.»

«If you work at it, one day you'll be as good as me. Try a dive.»

The owl knew what to do. It tightened its wings close to its body. A funnel of wind coiled close around me. The ground flew up to meet me at alarming speed. «Aaaah!» I cried.

«Extend your wings, then scoop up!» Tobias yelled.

And just like that, there was a layer of buoyant air beneath my wings as solid as a landing tarp. «That was fun! I should do it again.»

I dove again, this time letting myself get closer to the ground before I broke the fall. It was harder this time. «How close before I'm a goner?» I asked.

«Don't say that. And don't worry, the owl always knows, even when you don't. Come on, let's fly toward the mountains. The wind is different out there.»

«Thank you. For showing me. I think I get it now.»

«I like sharing it. I know it's not mine, but it feels like I'm sharing some great secret I have. I guess I am the only person who gets to fly this much.»

That seemed to please him. Was it worth it, to him? I wondered. He missed being human, having El, but maybe he would miss the sky just as much.

«So,» said Tobias, «who was that Chee you were talking to last night? You got really into it with her.»

«They,» I said. «They told me human gender doesn't apply to them. Something like that. Anyway, their name is Koril. They're... really different from Alem and Naxes.»

«That's Mr. King and Erek, right?»

«Yes. But you shouldn't forget that those are just personas. Fifty years ago they were different people.»

«So what? A year and a half ago I was a different person.»

«Because they have a choice. If the Yeerks found you out, you'd be stuck. You can't just throw away your lives and become new people. But if the Yeerks became suspicious of Alem and Naxes, they could throw off their identities and take on completely new ones, and the Yeerks would never know. They have a lot less at stake. That's why it's important to remember.»

«I thought you wanted them to help more than they do.»

«Yes. They've been doing much less than they could, even though they're not the ones in the line of fire. No matter how much they help us, we have to remember that about them. That their first instinct was to do less, and let you take the heat.»

«When you put it that way...» Tobias sighed. «You're kind of right. I think we were all used to thinking of Erek as our classmate. So when he didn't step up to be our homework helper or getaway driver or whatever, it seemed normal, because Erek King the schoolkid wouldn't do those things.»

«It's hard to remember with Koril too. They're so _nice_. And so smart. They've been a Christian nearly since Christ walked the earth, and there's so much I want to ask, but what Christian sees children fighting a war for them and doesn't offer to do their utmost to help?»

«Most people wouldn't offer to help. They'd want to keep their heads down and stay safe. But the Chee aren't people. Or aren't human, anyway.»

«No. But I still want to talk to Koril. They know so much about the universe, all these things I've only just remembered again. Maybe I can reach some kind of understanding. I'd like to, if I can.»

«Let me know if you do.» We passed over the mountains, and the wind changed as we flew down the leeward side into the Dry Lands. «Elfangor could only tell us so much. If we want to learn more, the Chee, and maybe Aftran, are it. And I think we should learn everything we can. Not just because of the war, but because the galaxy is full of life and we only know one corner of it. It's like only learning the history of the U.S.»

«What about Ax? He must know a lot about the galaxy.»

«He knows some. I've been learning, from his lessons for Toby. But not as much as you think. He wasn't a very good student.»

I laughed. «Elfangor wasn't, either. When he went to college he said it was nice to finally have teachers who didn't think he was a goof.»

Tobias laughed, a little uncomfortably. «It's kind of hard to imagine Elfangor as a bad student. He's a hero, you know? Heroes are supposed to be good at things.»

«You're a hero too, Tobias,» I said softly. «Are you good at everything?»

«Definitely not. Oh, look, there's Ax. I guess he's been here a while. One of us should take over for him.»

«I would, but I can't. I don't have the digital watch. Unless Ax has it – oh, right, no need. Internal time sense.»

«That's fine. You can take my place before dawn.»

Jax groaned internally at what this was going to do to my sleep cycle, but I didn't object aloud. «It's been nice talking. You should visit more often.»

«You want me to?»

«Of course.»

«Hello Loren, Tobias,» Ax cut in. «I have nothing to report. Which of you will be my replacement?»

«Such sweet talk, Ax. Reports and replacements. It's nice to see you too. And it's me on the next watch, by the way.»

«Then I will have your company on the return flight, Loren. Be well, Tobias.»

«I'll see you later, Tobias,» I said, and Jax wanted to giggle a little, because Elfangor's formal chivalrous streak was so much more pronounced in Ax. Elfangor never said things like «It would be an honor to share your company» as Ax did.

Ax and I flew back toward the mountains together. «What is your favorite human food, Loren?» Ax said.

I laughed. «Well, if you really want to know, it's gazpacho. It's a kind of cold vegetable soup we eat when it's hot outside.» A pause to think back. «Elfangor's was cheese soufflé. It's a very hard food to make. At first he ruined it more often than not. But over the years he learned.»

«I have not tried either of these foods.»

«Right, your friends only feed you junk food. Well, I can feed you some real food when you visit me.»

«Are cinnamon buns not real food? What are they, then?» Ax sounded alarmed.

«It's an expression. Cinnamon buns are real food. But they're not good for us. It's like feeding your body junk. Thus, junk food.»

«There are grasses on the home world with low nutritional value,» Ax said. «But no one consumes them unless there is no alternative.»

«Junk food for us is different. It's food that isn't good for us but tastes good, so you want to eat it anyway.»

«Your sense of taste is not adaptive, then.»

«Maybe it was back when humans lived in the wilderness and had to forage for food. But I guess not anymore. It's still useful sometimes, though. If you taste something very bitter, spit it out. That means it's probably poison.»

«I will remember.» We passed over the mountains, back to their green windward flanks. «Do you think the Chee's visit was a success?»

_He was breaking the ice!_ Jax realized. _With small talk! He's been learning how to manage humans from Tobias!_

_Unless he just felt like talking about food. You know how he is about it._

_No,_ Jax insisted. _I think it was on purpose. Tobias pretends to be his dæmon, right? When he's morphed human? Tobias could have given him all kinds of tips on how to pass. He could have learned things by now about being human that Elfangor took years to figure out._

«Yes. I think so. Though I'm still afraid they'll never open up to the possibility of therapy.»

«I admit I find it difficult to imagine confiding in any of the Chee we met last night. But then, I only observed them. I did not speak with them personally. I should make the attempt.»

«You could arrange to meet them on your own. You have plenty of spare time.»

«Yes,» said Ax, sounding a little glum. I wondered how bored he got sometimes, and Jax cursed me for being insensitive.

«I'm planning to meet Chee-koril tomorrow,» I said, realizing it was true only as I said it. «Not for therapy, but... to discuss things.»

«What things?»

I hesitated. If I told him my doubts about whether I was prepared to kill the enemy, he would hold me in contempt. In his eyes, I would be three times a traitor, to Jake, to my family, and to my people. So I said, «Koril shares my beliefs. They're a Christian. I want to hear their perspective, as an alien who has adopted my religion. And it's something we have in common. That's the first step to trust, I guess.»

«Here are my woods,» Ax said, in the same way I might say "here's my stop" on the bus. «I will go feed now. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Loren.»

«See you soon, Ax.»

I flew home, demorphed, and went to my phone. It beeped at me. I had a message on my answering machine. I played it back.

"Hi, Loren, it's Ellen. I haven't heard from you about what hours you want to work this month on the hotline. We miss you here. You do good work. Call me back."

Jax leaned against my leg for support, nauseated with guilt. It had completely slipped my mind the last few days. "We can't keep this up," I said. "We have to cut some hours at the crisis hotline."

"Ellen will be so disappointed," Jax whispered. "She's right. We do good work there."

"None of what we do there will matter if all of humanity is enslaved," I said. But it didn't feel true. It wasn't much consolation to a distraught teenager that the person who could be talking them through a crisis was off fighting aliens to save the world.

"Leave it for now," Jax said. "We'll tell her in person at church on Sunday. Let's call Koril."

It would be both easier and harder in person. Easier, because Ellen would be able to see how hard it was for us to do this, and harder because we'd know how hard Ellen was taking it.

I picked up the phone and dialed Koril's number. They answered after one ring. "Hello. This is Safiya."

"Hello, Koril," I said. "It's Loren. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?"

"I'm afraid not, Loren. My Bible group meets tomorrow after work. I should be available Friday after five, though."

"I'd like that. We should meet somewhere private, so we can talk."

"Don't worry. We can be private anywhere," Koril said. "My holograms can block whatever we say."

"Seriously? And you've never offered that to the Animorphs to help with secrecy?"

"Once," said Koril, voice flat. "They needed a way to get rid of David's body."

Jax retched uselessly, uncontrollably. "OK. OK, I'm sorry I asked. But you need to talk to Jake about how to use that more. Never mind. Let's just... Rose's Diner, OK? I already know the menu, so I don't have to ask the waiter to read it for me."

"No. I'm sorry. I should have put it more gently."

I laughed harshly. "Is there any way to put that gently?"

"I suppose not. I'll see you on Friday."

I shuddered as I set down the phone. I got ready for bed and set my alarm for 4:30 am. When I slept, I dreamed of Tobias and Elhariel perched on the body of a dead boy, pecking out his eyes.


	4. The Shield of Faith

"In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one."

– Ephesians 6:16

In the gray half-light of dawn, I finally saw the weapons truck. It was big, black, armored, an obvious scar on the desert to my owl eyes. It emerged from a small mountain pass and pulled into a garage at the facility.

I flew back over the mountains and saw Ax running through a clearing in the woods. «Ax!» I called. «I saw the truck! It was coming from the access road, not the main road. Can you morph and fly with me to Jake's house? I don't know where he lives.»

«Of course.» I saw him slip into the shadow of the trees, and his fur running together into feathers. «Ah. The last one was three days ago. That makes sense.»

«Because Yeerks have to feed every three days?»

«Yes. They must have a portable Kandrona at the facility, but Kandrona wave generators are very energy intensive. They would need supplementary power every three days in order to generate enough Kandrona for all the Yeerks.» Ax sounded excited. «This means we can disrupt their operations even more than we anticipated.»

Ax joined me in the sky. He flew with me to a nice neighborhood. Every house had a lawn in front. We landed in the trees behind a blue house with two cars in the driveway. I could hear the first morning stirrings inside the house. I hoped we weren't waking Jake up.

Ax said, «We cannot approach the window, as Tobias and I have done at your house. Prince Jake's brother Tom is a Controller.»

«Oh,» I said, my thought-voice very small. «No one told me that.» For some reason, I hadn't considered the possibility that the Animorphs' family members could be Controllers.

_He's the leader,_ thought Jax. _The one who has to make the hard decisions, even about his own brother. No wonder he didn't hesitate to give the order to infest us. He wouldn't think of us as an exception because we're Tobias' family. He_ knows _their families aren't safe._

_Somehow,_ I thought, _it makes the idea of following his orders easier. Because when he makes the orders, he knows it's his family on the line. _

«Do any of the other Animorphs have Controllers in their families?» I asked.

«We cannot be certain unless we follow them continuously for three days. But the only other one we know is Marco's mother. She is host to Visser One, the highest-ranking Yeerk in their military. Visser One faked her death two years ago to pursue Yeerk interests full-time.»

«You tell Jake,» I said numbly. «I need a minute.»

I would have cried, and held Jax for comfort, if I could have. The odds against that boy getting his mother back were terrifyingly steep. The Yeerks' top general wouldn't give up a host unless the whole Empire crumbled. I had been so small in my thinking, not even imagining that the other Animorphs could have sorrows as great as Tobias'.

_Now we know,_ thought Jax. _Those poor boys. They're fighting for their families, just like we are._

«Prince Merlyse is perched in front of the window in peregrine falcon form. That means she has heard and understood. We may go.» Ax hesitated. «Would you like some company, Loren?»

«Yeah,» I said, a little shakily. «Fly with me to my house?»

We flew together, toward where the houses crowded closer and closer together. Ax said, «Does it surprise you so much? Surely you know that children are among the victims of every war.»

«I know. It just hurts so much, to think of Jake fighting to save his brother, Marco to save his mother, and they can't know. If they knew, it would all be for nothing. Jake has to live with the Yeerk enslaving his brother every day. Marco must have to pretend his mother is still dead.»

Jax said, «Even Rachel and Cassie have to lie to their families. I guess you and Tobias are the lucky ones.»

«I know,» said Ax. «I think of my gratitude every evening, at the end of the ritual.»

«"From the rising of the sun to the setting, to its rising again, we replace what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and find peace." Yes, I remember.»

When I got home, I ate breakfast, then called Ellen to tell her I was cutting my hours. I took on a shift for that day, though, and for Saturday. It was harder to keep my composure than usual. I cried when a girl spoke to me of her mother's death, thinking of Marco. It must not have showed in my voice, though, because I was able to calm the girl's own hysterical sobs.

I got a call that evening from Jake. He said, "Hey, that project we've been having our eye on – you think Sunday would be the right day to tackle it?"

"Sunday," Jax murmured. "That's when it's due to come next. Before church that morning."

_I hope I don't miss Mass,_ I thought, a little dazed. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sounds good."

"I'll see you Sunday, then. An hour in advance. We don't want to be late."

#

I sat in a booth at Rose's Diner with a bowl of French onion soup, wishing I'd turned my hologram on, if only for a moment, when I first met Chee-koril. I'd focused on all the wrong cues with my hologram off, their face, their "dæmon," the way they moved, all of it useless for recognizing Koril with the hologram blocking my eyes with darkness. Jax was looking out for them, of course, but his eyes couldn't see very far. I'd hear Koril's footsteps first, except I wouldn't know them, because I hadn't been paying attention the first time around.

Jax started at someone who came in with a big, furry, dark dæmon, but when it came closer it turned out to be a black bear. Then – _No, this one has to be it. There are only so many black fuzzy dæmons that size._ He stepped toward the dæmon, who stuck out his nose and said, "Hello, Jaxom."

"Hello, Rakhamet," Jax said, pulling his face back.

"Sorry I'm late," said Koril. "Rush hour traffic, you know." They pulled into the booth in a single smooth movement.

My waiter must have seen Koril come in. He came over and took their order, a Caesar salad. When he left, the sounds in the diner became strangely muted, like we were inside a bubble.

Koril said, "The other patrons will hear us talking about the latest episodes of _The Young and the Restless_. So please, speak freely."

I raised my eyebrow, the one that hadn't been scarred, out of habit. "_The Young and the Restless_?"

"I devote a tiny fraction of my brain to reading soap opera discussion forums, so I always have some easy small talk on hand. I work as a nurse in a clinic in Jamaica, and the TV in the clinic is always playing that show. It's what the patients want to talk about."

I put down my spoon. "You came here from Jamaica."

"I heard what you said to Alem and Naxes, when you called us cowards and Pharisees."

Jax opened his mouth to speak, but Koril's dæmon projection gave a deep _whuff_, and he closed it again.

"You were right. I think sometimes we're so aware of the power we don't have that we forget the power we do have. I knew I couldn't fight alongside the Animorphs, so I considered the matter no further, and missed all that I can do to save this world from the Yeerk Empire."

"And it hurt you," I said. "Thinking about get involved."

"Yes," Koril admitted. "I try to avoid that pain. Who doesn't try to avoid pain? But as our Lord tells us, the way to destruction is broad, while the way to life is narrow and difficult. It's time I chose the narrow road again, however hard it might be."

Rakhamet said – no, they said, through Rakhamet's mouth – "Here's the waiter again."

"Don't do that," Jax hissed. "I know it's just you, so don't pretend you're a real dæmon."

The privacy bubble dropped, and the Rakhamet-projection gave Jax an inscrutable look beneath its heavy black brows. The waiter's chameleon dæmon gave Jax and the false dæmon the side-eye as he served the Caesar salad. "Thank you," said Koril, and I heard a crunch as they speared a crouton with their fork. When the waiter left, the shield of privacy enveloped them again.

"Do you actually eat that?" Jax blurted out.

"Yes," said Koril. "I don't need to, but I was made to run off diverse power sources, so if one system should fail or run out of fuel, I can use another. Though I could just as easily eat tree bark or grass clippings."

"Sorry, that was rude," I said.

"I'm hardly surprised you're curious. The last person to whom I revealed myself was a minister I loved and trusted, back in the 1800s. He had far more questions than you do. They didn't have anything like robots back then."

"A minister," I said. "So you're not Catholic."

"Sometimes I am. I began to follow the teachings of Christ before the Catholic Church was founded. Belief in Him is what matters to me. Beyond that, I have joined whatever church has best suited my beliefs at the time. Or sometimes I worship on my own."

I nodded slowly. It made sense. If I lived for hundreds of years, I might try out a different church to see how it suited me. But the life I had was too short to leave a church that had pulled me through some of my darkest days. Unless...

"Do you believe that Christ died for you, Koril?" I said.

Koril stopped eating their salad. Their eyes, startlingly green in their brown face, went distant. "I don't think so. What use is the road to Paradise to robots who can't die?"

"What about the Pemalites, then? The Hork-Bajir? The Yeerks?"

"Do you know what the Hork-Bajir believe?"

"No."

"I don't either. But I'll tell you what the Pemalites believed." Koril ate a forkful of salad. "In the beginning there was the Big Bang, or as the Pemalites called the expansion of the universe, the Outwardness. In the infinitesimal fraction of time that began the Outwardness, all the matter that made up the universe was perfectly even. Balanced. Symmetrical. If it had remained that way, everything in the universe would be the same, everywhere. There would be no stars or planets, just scattered atoms in the void.

"But something happened in that tiny sliver of time. The Pemalites would say, the balance of the universe was played with. Matter was disrupted into beautiful chaos. Because of that imbalance, we have galaxies and stars and all life as we know it. The Pemalites worshipped that divine spark of fun, the _Kolumatiy_, that first played with the universe. They honored the _Kolumatiy_ by spreading the beautiful chaos of life everywhere, and bringing its playful joy to people."

"That's interesting," I said, "and thanks for sharing, but why are you telling me this?"

Koril leaned forward, and the projection of the Newfoundland started toward Jax too, until they seemed to remember that he didn't like that. "Because the Pemalites are gone, but that doesn't have to mean the _Kolumatiy_ is gone from the universe. I'm not sure what I believe about it. Sometimes I think it's time I let go of what my dead creators once worshipped. But sometimes, I watch the ripples on a pond as human children skip stones across the water, and the _Kolumatiy_ shines as brightly as it ever did in the Pemalites' story-fires. What I'm trying to say is that there is something divine in this universe, and if the life it created comes in as many forms as there are stars in your sky, then maybe it must reveal itself in as many different ways."

My eyes burned, then began to spill over. Jax climbed up onto the booth beside me, and said, "I know. I know I should just pray and ask Jesus and Magdalene if the blood of their sacrifice runs in everyone's veins, but I'm scared of the answer. I would be scared if the answer were no, but I think it's not, and that's..."

"What would it mean, then?"

"It would mean we're killing sinners who could be saved. And they can, I _know_ they can, because Cassie wouldn't trust Aftran if she couldn't."

"I'm in no position to tell you what's right, Jaxom. This is a choice I cannot make, a choice my creators made for me when they programmed me. That is why I follow Christ's teachings, but can never embody them, because I can't choose to do otherwise. I think the Hork-Bajir and the Yeerks, perhaps even the Taxxons, have Christ's love and the _Kolumatiy_ within them. But I believe that this Earth is sacred too, and the Empire would crush its beauty and leave it nothing but a husk."

I wiped my tears with my napkin. Jax leaned against me, head on my shoulder. "My first real mission is on Sunday," I said hoarsely. "Just before church."

"God save your soul," said Koril. "Put it in His hands, Loren. Take up the shield of faith. It will protect you from the Yeerks' evil... and your own."

"You've never had to do anything like this," I said accusingly. "How would you know?"

"I've stood by while masters beat their slaves and girls were married to men three times their age," said Koril, "and did nothing. Faith is the only reason I keep trying."

I wrapped an arm around Jax and crushed him against my side. "Koril, will you be my therapist?"

They blinked.

"I think I'm going to need one too," I continued. "Though please, switch off your hologram when we're together. I'm tired of lies. I have to live with so many, now."

Koril nodded. "I promise. And I'm honored. Though I'll keep it for just now. We need to pay the check."

"Where do you work now?"

"A Lutheran clinic for people without insurance, part-time. I'll be posing as a voluntary Controller."

"I guess you'll need your shield too. I can't imagine what you'll see. What are voluntary Controllers even like?"

"From what Naxes has told me, they're more pitiable than anything else. The poor, the abused, the disaffected. In most cases they really do get a better life than they had, in the material sense. If your country served all of its people, the Yeerks would have much fewer volunteers."

I shivered. I didn't like to think that this was our fault in any way. But it didn't surprise me.

The waiter came back with the check. Koril insisted on paying, and I didn't protest too much – it wasn't like money was any concern for them, and disability didn't give me enough to eat out much.

"Thank you, Loren," they murmured, leaving the bills on the table. "For challenging me. When no one around me knows what I am, I get far too complacent."

_You're still complacent,_ Jax thought. _But you'll learn. All of you Chee will learn._

#

I tried to go to sleep early the night before, but it took me ages to fall asleep, and when I did, my dreams replayed the worst parts of my time in space as a teenager: the helplessness of being a Controller, the faceless boy from the fake mini-universe I created, the screams and wet tearing sounds of the Taxxon rebellion. When my alarm shrilled at 3:30 am, I was curled around Jax with a death grip about his ribs, and there were hoof marks on my thighs where he'd kicked me in intangible struggles.

As I brushed my teeth, I numbly wondered if I could even get gingivitis or whatever with the morphing. The routine gave my hands something to do besides crush Jax's ribs, though, so I wasn't about to give it up. I changed into my morphing leotard and looked down at Jax.

"I'm not sure I can do this," Jax admitted. "We won't be able to hear each other, not really, or feel each other, even while we..."

"The kids have done it a hundred times," I said.

"Terrible, isn't it?"

"They'll worry if we don't get going."

"Let's get started, then."

I threw open my window. It was raining. My floor would get wet while I was out. Why was I thinking of such things now? I thought instead of the long-eared owl, and the way the raindrops would feel as the wind flung them against my face.

I kept my hand on Jax's head, even as my hand wasn't much of a hand anymore. We awaited the moment when Jax would disappear with even more dread than the first time we morphed. The darkness of my room sharpened into focus as my eyes widened in my face, grinding my bones aside. Then it grew larger and larger around me, and the reassuring warmth of Jax's fur against my wing-hand was gone, along with his view of the world, in all its subtle grades of smell and dull smears of gray vision. My sob came out as a horrible rasp in my shriveling throat. I felt like I had died, dæmonless as a corpse.

_Not dead. Changed into a new form,_ Jax whispered.

_A monster._

Jax did not argue.

The cold certainties of the owl's mind were a blessed relief. It was focused on flying despite the rain, on stopping under cover to flick water off its wings and keeping the wind at its back. It carried Jax and me over the mountains, beyond the rainclouds, to the low, dry woods on the leeward side. The eerie light of Dracon beams pulsed dimly in the distance, making the owl uneasy. It could easily see movement beneath the foliage, though, so I landed there, where the children shivered in their morphing outfits in the cold desert night. I began to demorph, resetting my morphing clock before it all started.

«Morning, Loren,» Tobias said. «That just leaves Toby.»

"G-g-great," Marco managed between shivers. "You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I wish the Yeerks would j-j-just hurry up and get here already."

«Why is it acceptable for Marco to play with mouth-sounds and not me?» said Ax, shaking water off his fur with the flat of his blade.

"B-b-because I'm not playing, you big b-b-blue hairball, I'm shivering! Don't you remember from the North P-p-pole?"

«That is the problem with auditory communication,» Ax mused. «It can be disrupted in so many ways.»

I was acutely aware of that, as my body was in between states where I could thought-speak or talk. When my beak melted and reformed, making the inside of my face itch, I said, "Do you always do this before missions?"

"Freeze our asses off?" said Marco. "No, but we've been having a bad run of luck lately. Good thing the Yeerks aren't invading Winnipeg, or these morphing outfits would get to be a serious problem."

"Why would the Yeerks want to invade _Winnipeg_?" Rachel said. She was huddled against the bulk of her dæmon for warmth.

«Why are they invading Santa Barbara instead of Washington D.C.?» said Tobias.

Cassie rubbed her arms and said, "Maybe they first landed here, and got started with their operations. If they'd landed in, I dunno, Beijing, maybe they would have launched the invasion from there."

«We do not know how the Yeerks plan their invasions.»

"Maybe they picked it because of the weather. If you're going to invade a planet, you might as well do it where the sun is always shining."

Jax was finally solid in my arms again. I was curled around him, sitting on the ground, watching the last of my feathers disappear. "This is what I mean," I said. "Do you always talk about whatever pointless random stuff you can think of before a mission?"

"Marco talks about pointless random stuff all the time," Rachel said.

"And you talk about it right back," I said, raising my eyebrow.

«Hork-Bajir tell war stories before we go into battle,» said Toby, coming in for a landing above our heads. «We have plenty of them to go around, even if no one remembers the old wars anymore.»

«Do you have a war story for us, Toby?» said Ax.

Toby went silent for a moment, then said, «Meret knew she had a twin sister. The Yeerks took them away from each other too late for her to forget. She didn't know how she would ever find her. They didn't share a name, because the Yeerks don't allow hosts to name their children. She came up with the name Meret for herself.

«Meret was one of the first my parents freed, and joined the raiding parties as soon as she was recovered. In her second raid, she fought a Hork-Bajir who looked just like her. Her blades had the same curves, and her eyes were just the same shade of white-gold. Meret believed it was her sister, though she couldn't be sure. She fought desperately against the Yeerks, but could not capture the Hork-Bajir who looked just like her.

«In the next raid, she saw the Hork-Bajir again. She was fighting off another Controller, and her mirror image came in with a killing blade for her throat. But at the last moment, the blow hesitated, and Meret could twist out of the way. She knew her sister was in there, fighting. Someone caught the other Controller, and Meret focused on her sister. Her sister seized her throat in a stranglehold. Meret used impassioned strength to drive her blade deep into her sister's wrist, breaking the hold. Another blow to her face knocked her out.

«We had to amputate that hand at the wrist. Meret's blade had destroyed all the nerves there. For the course of the three days, Meret could not even look at her sister. But when it was over, she came to Meret and said, "Sister, what is your name?" Meret gave her name, and told her she had no second. "My name is Elgat," her sister said. "And we choose second name together." That is the story of my second-in-command in the raiding party this morning, Meret Kar, and her sister Elgat Kar.»

"That's a good story," Jake said quietly, Merlyse curled around him in tiger form. I thought of Tom, and felt like crying. "Are your people in place?"

«Yes. I will show Ax and Tobias where they are when we fly in closer. Speaking of which, it's time for both of you to come with me. They've probably caught your morphs by now.»

Dread filled me. For a wild moment I wanted to volunteer in their place, so they didn't have to go. But that would just send them into a different danger. I held out my hand to Ax, tentatively. He looked at it, startled for a moment, until I nodded toward his tail blade. I didn't have a blade to touch to his, so this would do. He pressed the flat of his blade to my palm. "Good luck," I whispered. Then Ax pulled back and began to morph owl, his tail blade withering into nothing.

Tobias landed on my shoulder for a moment. «We'll be fine. You'll have your eye out for us. Right?»

"Right," I said. When he flew off, I began to morph myself. "You should show me where your warriors are, too, Toby."

«The truck will be here in approximately thirty-five of your minutes,» Ax said. «You must return here before then. Their eyesight will be poorer than yours, and they may need your guidance.»

I wasn't sure how he could keep on talking like that while his bones were cracking into new shapes. I just nodded while I still had a human neck.

"Loren," said Jake. My neck had crunched into the swivel-head of the owl, and I pivoted my gaze toward him. Merlyse watched me with luminous yellow eyes. "We're counting on you to help all of us. So good luck to you too."

Jax heard the message beneath what he said. _To help all of us, huh? Not just Ax and Tobias._ I couldn't talk anymore, nor thought-speak, so Jax said, "We're ready to step up. We can do this." Then he disappeared.

"You'll do fine," Cassie said. "We'll see you soon."

The morph completed. The owl wanted to get off the ground. I wanted to cling to it like a child to her mother's leg. I took off anyway.

It wasn't raining on this side of the mountain, which made flying much easier. My morph didn't want to be anywhere near the other birds of prey, which helped me keep a less-than-suspicious distance from the others as we flew. There was only a sliver of moon, and my owl mind knew in a distant intellectual sense that it was quite dark, though the blackness of the sky was going gray at its eastern edge. Toby went into a stoop around the outer edge of the facility, where they kept the brush thick and unburnt, to keep away the eyes of anyone on the main road that came through the mountain pass. We slowly followed, spacing out our landings so they didn't look like a group bird maneuver.

As I dove, Toby's people came into focus beneath the foliage. I was impressed. The owl eyes could see everything down to mice scurrying under rocks, but the Hork-Bajir had tucked themselves so low to the ground and still in the dense cover of the brush that the owl had taken no notice of them until now, when I'd gotten a bit closer. If I couldn't see them, the Yeerks didn't have a chance.

«Yah!» Tobias said, as he came in for a landing after me. «Oh my God, I didn't see you there. Good job, guys.»

Now that I had landed in the brush, I could see that two Hork-Bajir were unconscious, breathing shallowly, their heads buried in the dry dirt. The raiders around them were gently stroking the head blades that protruded out of the dirt. «It helps keep them down,» Toby explained when she saw me looking.

«Touching their blades, or burying their heads in the dirt?» I asked.

«Burying their heads,» Toby said. «The stroking, it's just... they could use some kindness, after all they've been through.»

_If we had just rescued some human-Controllers, even if we didn't know them, we would do the same,_ said Jax. _Wouldn't we?_

«Go ahead and demorph,» I said to Ax and Tobias. «I'll keep an eye out.»

Tobias flew down to perch on the neck of one of the subdued Controllers, acquiring his DNA. I swept my eyes toward the facility, though I could hear the crunch of bone and liquid sounds of organs dissolving as Ax and Toby demorphed. I could see a Controller using the latrine where Toby's people had probably caught the two unconscious Hork-Bajir below me.

«What do these Controllers do? What is their role in the facility?» said Ax.

A pause, then Toby said, «My people don't know. They were wearing black armbands on their left arms, just above the elbow blade. There's something stiff and square inside the armbands. They kept them for Ax and Tobias to put on.»

«Oh,» I said. «I've been watching them pretty consistently for a few days, so I think I know what that means. Those aren't trainees. They're like maintenance people. If a fire gets out of hand, they put it out, or if a Dracon beam breaks they go get a replacement. Stuff like that. And I think that thing in the armband is a key card. When they want to get into the facility they press the side of the armband into this reader by the door.»

«Thanks, Loren,» said Tobias. «That'll give us a good excuse to lure people out here. We can say that we saw something weird while we were out doing maintenance work, something attention-grabbing enough to get a whole big team.»

«We have two raiding parties,» Toby said. «You can use that excuse for the other one. For this group we can use bait. You can say you saw two Controllers take off their armbands and try to run away. They'd probably send a good-sized party after that. And it would be a distraction from what's going on at the truck. Any volunteers?»

Some silent communication – hand signals? – and Toby said, «Good, we have two.»

Tobias said, «Toby, I don't want to endanger your – »

«We know what we're doing, Tobias,» Toby said in a hard voice. «I don't question Jake's orders, you don't question mine. Got it?»

«Got it. Oh, thanks, can you help me put it on my arm? I'm afraid I'll cut it on my – right, there it goes. Say, Loren, is the coast clear? I'm ready to go.»

«Wait for me,» Ax insisted. «I want to know where you are at all times.»

«Don't worry, Ax, I'll let you know where he is.»

«You must go back to the others soon. Just wait.» A rasping sound of bone against bone, and the creak of sinew. «I am ready. Give me an armband.»

The Controller had left the latrine. There was no one nearby. «Coast is clear. Don't forget to go through the door facing the mountains. I'm not sure the other doors open to your keycard.»

«And remember,» Toby said, «the other raiding party is on the opposite side of the facility, past the shooting range. It's by that snag where we perched while we were watching for the truck.»

«I'll come back to check on you soon,» I promised. «I'm going back to the mountain pass now.»

I waited until Ax and Tobias were well away from my perch before I took off again. I didn't have Ax's sense of time, but I got a sense from the ragged eastern edge of light along the sky that the truck was due to come soon. As I flew toward the mountain, every pulse of reddish light in my peripheral vision made me tense up inside. I felt like I was teetering on a knife's edge within my own mind, and anything could push me over. When I glimpsed the Animorphs' human and dæmon forms through the trees, I said, «Get into your morphs. It's almost time.»

I perched in a tree by the edge of the access road where I'd seen the truck before. The squishing sounds of morphing set me teetering on that edge again. _What if someone hears them?_

_We have owl ears,_ Jax reminded me. _They don't. No one can hear them but us. Pay attention to the road._

Is it possible to be bored and panicked at the same time? Every second dragged through me slowly but painfully, like sandpaper rubbing inch by inch down my face. I couldn't imagine when it would end. But it would end, and whatever came next might be even worse. Jax and I murmured the Lord's prayer over and over, just to distract ourselves from the empty horror of it.

_What's that?_ said Jax, swiveling our ears toward the mountain pass. I was disoriented for a moment, but he was right: there was the barest vibration in the air, getting slightly louder every moment. A truck's engine? I waited a moment to be sure. _That's it,_ said Jax. _Tell them._

«It's coming,» I said. «I hear it coming.»

«Should we charge?» said Rachel, her voice taut and eager. My head swam a little. How could she be excited about this?

_Maybe she likes it better than that terrible boredom,_ said Jax. _I can understand that, a little._

«Not yet, but come closer. Stay out of sight, but be ready to go.»

The sounds of fallen branches crunching beneath their enormous feet sounded as loud as gunshots to my owl ears. Jax had to remind me again that there was no way anyone in the truck could hear. _Elephants sneak up on people all the time in the savanna. We've listened to that documentary, right? Sir David Attenborough is walking along and wow! There it is!_

«If Sir David Attenborough is a Controller, I might just quit right now,» I muttered.

«What?» said Cassie.

«Nothing.» The truck came into view around the bend of the access road. «Get ready!»

«Where is it?» said Rachel. «I can't see anything but trees and some road.»

«I can't even see the road,» Marco complained. «Why did I pick rhino morph again?»

«I'll count down, OK?» I said. It was traveling at a fairly constant speed. «It'll be there in something like 15... 14... 13... »

«Oh, great, a countdown. No pressure, right?»

«12... 11... 10... »

«Oh!» said Cassie. «I think I hear it!»

«Me too,» said Jake.

«9... 8... 7...»

«I can see it now,» said Rachel. «Just a little.»

«6... 5... 4... 3... wait, no, _now_!»

I had miscounted. The truck was right in front of them. Luckily, the Animorphs had started moving shockingly fast at my cue, firing out of the woods like slugs from an enormous cannon. Cassie and Rachel, with their better eyesight, took the lead, Jake and Marco barreling behind them.

Cassie collided with the front of the truck, the passenger's side crumpling inward. There was a horrible meaty crunch: there had been someone in the passenger's seat, someone alien, now splattered. The tires screeched as the truck was shoved toward the left side of the road, then again louder as the driver struggled to take back control. I could hear him panting and gagging on the smell of his dead companion.

Rachel and Jake hit the side of the truck at about the same time. Rachel left a good dent, but Jake had better luck: with an unnerving shriek, the metal parted around his horn. A small pile of Dracon beams spilled out of the truck and scattered across the road. When Marco hit the back of the truck, he tore a hole too, more Dracon beams tumbling free. «Aha!» he cried. «They make armored trucks bulletproof, but not rhino-proof!»

Cassie went for the front of the truck with her tusks, shattering the side window and the edge of the windshield. The driver screamed and tucked his head under his arms to protect his face from the flying glass. With his grip off the steering wheel, the truck careened to the side of the road, crashing into the trunk of a big tree. Immediately, Rachel charged toward the hole Jake had driven into the side of the truck, forcing it wider with the impact.

I heard a muffled cry from the driver's side of the truck, and a Hork-Bajir warrior leapt out of the hole in the truck. Blades rasped against metal, and the hole in the back of the truck widened, another Hork-Bajir warrior bursting through. The fight was on, but the Animorphs were ready to meet it. Rachel wrapped her trunk around the Hork-Bajir's midsection and squeezed the breath out of it, then threw it back down to the ground.

«Will you be all right if I go check on the facility?» I said. «I want to see if anyone's noticed the commotion over here.» _And I want to check on Ax and Tobias._

_And I don't want to watch this anymore,_ said Jax, our eyes on Marco as a Hork-Bajir swiped a blade toward his eye. He tossed his head, the impact shoving the Hork-Bajir's attack aside and jarring its arm to the shoulder.

«Yes, go,» Jake said tersely. There were more Hork-Bajir emerging from the truck.

I turned tail and flew away. That was the nice thing about vision: if you weren't facing something, you couldn't see it. Sounds, though, couldn't be so easily blocked out. Screams both animal and alien followed me as I went back to the facility. But by the time I was within sight of the facility, even my owl ears couldn't hear them anymore. No danger of the Yeerks finding out anytime soon, then.

I looked toward the hiding places of Toby's raiders, and realized they weren't hiding places anymore. Most of them were fleeing beyond the hills, carrying unconscious Hork-Bajir-Controllers between them, while the rest covered their retreat with fire from stolen Dracon beams. Not a few Hork-Bajir lay dead, but I didn't have time to check how many of them had armbands. I spotted Toby overhead, still in owl morph, directing the retreat and covering fire. «Toby! Do you need help?»

«We're fine. Did they get the truck?»

«Yes. They're fighting some Controllers, but they can handle it.»

«Then go look for Ax and Tobias. I haven't seen them since they first directed a search party our way.»

Cold fear doused my senses. I circled the facility. It was chaos. Controllers were running and shouting, trying to find troops with enough training to go after Toby and her people, pressing Dracon beams into their hands. I saw three burly Hork-Bajir carrying wounded back toward the facility, dark blood seeping from a severed hand, a ruined eye.

_Wait a second,_ said Jax. _Remember what Cassie said? The Yeerks have no use for maimed hosts. They just kill them._

_Those aren't hosts at all,_ I realized, with dawning terror. _That's Ax and Tobias._

0


	5. The Red Sea

_We need to get help,_ said Jax. _Jake will know what to do. Let's go. _

It was mostly Jax beating our wings and sweeping us around in a turn. I felt distant, numb. The sight of Ax's and Tobias' blood dripping from the stump of a hand, the ruin of an eye, played on endless repeat behind my eyes. I realized I didn't know how far thought-speak range extended, so I just started shouting at the Animorphs, not knowing when they'd start to hear me. «Help! I need help! Ax and Tobias are captured! The Yeerks have them!»

I got an answer from Jake sooner than I'd dared to hope: «...Coming – hang on.»

_They're slower than us,_ Jax thought despairingly, taking stock of our surroundings. _They've got terrain to cover, and they have to make sure they're not seen until they're ready to attack – what if they get there too late?_

_What are you saying? That_ we _should go in without them? By ourselves? Go in and kill everyone who's laid hands on our family?_ And as I said it, the images blazed into my mind: the power of the bison, charging in, tossing Controllers left and right until they _got away from my boys._ But if I wanted to kill them, if I wanted to fight, what did that say about me?

_We don't have to,_ Jax said. _We can wait. But..._

We were flying back toward the facility. How hadn't I noticed that rush of wind, the burn of wing muscle, the lights flashing in my face? Did I even want to go back? I wasn't sure. As the desert landscape, scarred by Dracon fire, fell under the pall of brightening sunlight, I saw no more sign of Toby and her people – only the bodies of those they'd left behind. I took a moment to look for armbands. About as many of the fallen didn't have them as did. But they'd taken away a lot of their unconscious brethren, thrown over their shoulders in a fireman's carry.

_I have no right to kill these people,_ I thought desperately. _The ones in armbands are no different from the others. They're all just dead._

Jax called to mind Toby's people, how they'd caressed the captured Controllers like long-lost siblings, like Meret and Elgat in Toby's story. They looked across the battlefield and saw family. But they didn't hesitate to fight, for the sake of the family they might save. _The Yeerks are enslaving these people, these good and loving people. And now they have Ax and Tobias. These are children of our Lord, Loren, and that makes the Yeerks the Pharaoh. God gave Moses the power to bring the Red Sea down on them. God gave_ us _the power to do the same. Moses was afraid of the power God gave him, but he used it to free his people!_

"They have the _hruthin_!" I heard a Controller say, baring a beakful of teeth. "They're bringing them to the Yeerk pool. I wonder who'll get them as hosts? _Ghafrash,_ we're getting at least two new Vissers today."

_I wonder if Moses hated himself, after,_ I thought numbly. _He was raised by Egyptians, after all. The Bible doesn't say._ I landed in some thick brush near the door of the facility where Ax and Tobias had been carried, and demorphed, thoughts of baptizing Tobias in the woods bringing my body more clearly into focus than I'd ever been able to before. _Only one of us, Jax. We can't just go charging in. _

_Fly morph,_ he said. _Catch a ride on a Hork-Bajir going in. The fly morph had a good sense of smell, remember? Hopefully it'll be able to sniff out the Yeerk pool._

_Then find someplace to demorph where we won't be caught? This is beyond dangerous,_ I thought.

_Not as much danger as they're in,_ and that thought from Jax spurred me onward. For the moment I still had him, I clutched Jax's fur hard enough to hurt, morphed away the last of my owl feathers, then focused on the bizarre, fragmented world of the fly.

The few moments I spent mostly human overwhelmed my senses: the crackle and smoke of burning brush, the metallic stink of what could only be Hork-Bajir blood, rough calls in language I could only partly understand. It made me eager to escape into fly morph, as strange as the experience had been. Not to mention I was nearly paralyzed with the fear of someone noticing me, even with the cover of bristly leaves. The cover felt more secure now that I was shrinking.

_We'll get them,_ Jax chanted, a mantra that kept me focused. _Or at least, we'll hold off the Yeerks long enough for the others to come and get them. We'll do it. They won't get our boys._ My vise-tight grip on him loosened as my hand became a chitinous fly leg, then he disappeared altogether.

The fly smelled the dead bodies of the Hork-Bajir, and began to spiral toward them, intrigued. I would have retched if I could. As it was, I wrenched the fly's focus from the dead to the living. As best I could make out, the Hork-Bajir to my right were headed for the door, so if I could just grab on – there! My fly legs grasped the upper curve of a knee blade. The quality of the air changed, the flow of air smaller and more contained. We were in.

_How are we supposed to find it?_ Jax groaned. _This place is huge to a fly. _

_Just wait for a whiff of... something. Like when you smelled something alien at Cassie's place. _

_The Hork-Bajir smell alien,_ Jax pointed out.

_Yeah. But we can smell that right now. This will be a different kind of alien._

There were at least ten different smells, though, that unnerved the fly's brain at the moment. Even Jax, who was accustomed to using smells as input, couldn't make much sense of it. Then we heard, distantly, but coming distinctly from our right, " – infest the Andalites with – " followed by a whiff of a strange, rich, oily smell we hadn't sensed before.

There was a corridor stretching off to the right, but the Hork-Bajir we were riding on was going straight ahead. Time to bail. I buzzed off the Hork-Bajir's knee blade. I heard the Controller snarl something to its companion, who said, "_Khal ethret hruthin,_" and swiped at me with a clawed hand.

If not for the fly's mind, I'd have been squashed to pulp. It lurched sideways and down, then in a crazy pattern that made my head swim. _They think we're an Andalite! We need to hide before they swat us!_ I took off down the right-running corridor and felt for the change in air current that meant a door or branching corridor. I could hear the Controllers lumbering behind me, talking indistinctly to each other.

_There,_ said Jax, feeling a change in air movement. There was a black chasm to our left, delving into the wall – a doorframe. It was more than wide enough for us to slip through. We heard the Controllers swear and turn around. Jax thought, _Is there_ _room to demorph? To morph bison?_

_Let's find out,_ I thought. I got a sense of space from the airflow in the dark room. Supply closet? I hoped so. Even if it was too small for the bison, I would _make_ it bigger. Jax thought of how my face would look in a couple of minutes, clammy with fear, but with teeth bared. I imagined Jax crouched a little, as if to charge, hooves planted wide apart. The darkness lost its feeling of an empty cathedral and become as close as any other room. I lost the oily smell of the Yeerk pool as my sense of smell went dull, only to get it back when Jax reappeared. He pressed his nose to the crack of the door, confirming the direction of the Yeerk pool. Yes, we would find it, when it was time.

I found myself breathing hard as soon as I had lungs. _I didn't know morphing could be so tiring,_ I thought. _It takes so much focus._ I felt like sagging against the door for support. _What if I just wait for the others to come? That would be safer. I wouldn't have to do this alone. I wouldn't have to impale a Hork-Bajir on my horn and hear it scream –_

From the direction of the Yeerk pool smell, I heard faint snatches of Ax's thought-voice. «Never – you foul – take me alive!»

Jax pressed himself to my shin. _You know how Elfangor was. Tobias will hold out hope, but Ax will kill himself before they infest him, if they give him even a fraction of a chance. _

_No,_ I cried. I felt so weak, so powerless. I needed to call down the Red Sea, but it wasn't inside me. I needed to be strong.

_I need to be the bison,_ Jax thought, and let her strength fill the spotlight of his mind.

My shoulders exploded outward from my body so fast that I needed to lean against the wall to keep from falling over, top-heavy. Then my legs became huge with muscle too. My spine crunched and twisted itself into a new shape. My skin itched as thick fur sprouted from it. The closet was starting to feel very small, very fast. _Get ready,_ I thought. _We're about to lose the element of surprise._

The horns grew from my skull and burst out of my skin, curving upward. Jax was gone, joining me behind the bison's eyes, the bison's nose that could smell the Yeerk pool and did not like it at all. She was afraid. She wanted to go outside. She shoved at a wall of her prison, experimentally, and was pleased when it collapsed easily against the pressure. She stomped out of the prison, but she was still not free. Trapped! Where was the outside?

_No outside,_ murmured a masculine voice, one she trusted, for some reason. _The herd is in danger. There are predators down that way who have your son._

I tossed my head and stamped. No one took my children and survived! I gathered my muscles, then stampeded to where the predators had my herd surrounded. The entrance was too narrow for me, I noticed distantly as I hurtled toward it. _CRUNCH._ Not anymore.

I couldn't see very well, but that had never been enough to stop me. Ax was demorphed, pinned to the ground, fighting off Controllers trying to put shackles on his tail. Tobias was still in morph, unconscious, two Controllers bringing his head toward the roiling leaden surface of the Yeerk pool. «Get off him, you filth!» Ax was screaming.

The bison's anger was my anger. I couldn't draw any border between them. We were two thousand pounds of motherly rage, and we were _coming for our son._ I was barreling straight toward Tobias, throwing off the Hork-Bajir cutting at me as I went as if they were biting gnats. Tobias' captors saw me coming and turned themselves and Tobias out of the way. _Crunch_ went the side of the Yeerk pool against my massive weight, and the dark liquid flooded over the broken wall. I slipped on the suddenly-slick floor and nearly lost my footing. I heard the Controllers holding Tobias groan in dismay.

«Loren?» cried Ax.

«Help me get Tobias out of here!» I shouted, but Ax could hardly help himself at the moment, let alone his nephew. Some of his attackers had been distracted, though, and were turning toward me. I had given him that much.

I felt a blade bite into my back leg. Instinctively, I kicked backward with that hoof. There was the snap of bone, and a Hork-Bajir cried out in pain. I wondered if it was one of Tobias' captors, but I couldn't turn to see, because three of the Controllers who had been after Ax were now charging toward my front.

Well, my horns were scarier than their blades. I charged right back toward them, trusting Ax to get out of the way.

I felt heavy impact in my skull, but the bones there were so thick it didn't hurt. Blades dug toward my neck, but the fur was so heavy there that they barely nicked my skin. I was a tank. The Hork-Bajir couldn't stop me! I heard screams, and felt something wet trickle down from my horns into my face.

The wall was coming up. Too late to stop now. I crushed a Hork-Bajir's arm between my leading shoulder and the wall. Two more Hork-Bajir were coming for me. No time to turn around. Jax knew what to do, after training at Mike's Dæmon Defense for years as an animal with hooves. He leaned against the wall, shifted his weight to his front hooves, and kicked backward, hard, with both legs. The Controllers went flying backward. I slipped on the wet floor a little and nearly lost my balance. It was an effort to turn around without falling, and by the time I did, there was a blade slashing at my face. A line of bright pain scored across my nose. «Aaaahhh!»

«I'm coming, Loren!» Ax said. «Tobias, if you can hear me, get out of here and demorph!»

No response from Tobias, still. I moved forward and stomped on my attacker's foot with my hoof, making it cry out, but not before it cut half my ear off. The pain made me stop in my tracks for a moment. Then I saw my attacker struggling toward me again, and I stomped again, so it doubled over in pain, and then I stampeded right over it, and thought of it no more. Another Hork-Bajir was swiping a clawed hand toward me, until FWAPP! It had no hand anymore. I was reminded suddenly, painfully, of Elfangor's tail fighting. Ax was just as good, if not even faster.

I took a moment to take stock. All the Hork-Bajir left were dead or wounded. Tobias was still unconscious on the floor, his ruined eye weeping blood. «Wake him up, Ax! He has to get out of here!»

Ax went to him and wrapped his tail around Tobias' arm, shaking him. «Wake up, Tobias. You must wake up.»

His remaining eye slowly opened. «Huh? Whuh? Where am I?»

«The Yeerk pool at the facility. You're injured. Please, we must leave this place.»

The sound of clawed feet on tile. My head whipped toward the corridor. «Ax! Reinforcements are coming!»

Ax turned his stalk eyes to the door. «Where are the others?»

«They're coming, but I don't know when!»

Ax's tail raised into fighting position. «Then we must defend Tobias until they arrive.»

The reinforcements were at the end of the corridor. «I'm going to charge. Scatter them. Be ready to pick up the pieces.» Without even looking back to see if Ax was ready, I gathered my strength and charged down the corridor at the oncoming Hork-Bajir.

The corridor was long enough that I really got to build up speed. By the time I got to them I couldn't have stopped if I'd wanted to. My enemies scattered like bowling pins. The only thing that stopped my momentum were bodies breaking beneath my hooves. A Hork-Bajir grabbed onto my shoulder, sticking on me like a burr with its knee and elbow blades. I shook myself, hard, and when it didn't come off, I heaved my shoulder against the wall, breaking its spine. More Hork-Bajir hacked at my other side. I tossed my head at them, scattering them away from the points of my horns. The pain was sinking its claws into me. Was Tobias demorphing? Was Ax holding his ground? There was no time to think.

The building shook. _Thud. Boom._ My attackers turned toward the sound. It was like an earthquake. _Or like two elephants and two rhinos breaking down a door,_ Jax thought.

«We're here!» I cried, reaching with my thoughts toward the other Animorphs. «Follow my voice! We're this way!»

«... Door...on our way...» was Cassie's faint reply.

I kicked and bucked as the press of attackers tried to overwhelm me. Ax joined the fray, removing Hork-Bajir from my back with swift precision. There was no sign of Tobias, but I couldn't think about that, I _couldn't._

An elephant's trumpet tore through the air. They were coming! My attackers turned toward the sound, and I took advantage of their distraction, tossing Hork-Bajir over my shoulder like sacks of rice. An elephant came running in. «Get away from Tobias, you creeps!» and shook Hork-Bajir left and right with great sweeps of her tusks. Another elephant behind her got one look at me and said, «Oh, wow,» before getting into the fray with her own trunk and tusks. Then the rhinos came and wreaked even more mayhem. The tide was turning.

«Ax,» I said, finally able to focus on something besides fighting. «Where's Tobias?»

«Still in the Yeerk pool room,» said Ax. «Let's get him.»

We went back to the Yeerk pool. It was a mess of brown sludge, dark blood, blue blood, red, lumps of what could only be squished Yeerk, and the bodies of the dead and wounded half-submerged throughout. One of the wounded lifted its head and looked around, at me, Ax and Tobias, and the chaos in the hall. "The seventh bandit," it said, baring its teeth in a ghastly smile. "The human."

My blood ran cold.

Ax identified Tobias and shook him. «Come on, Tobias. Demorph.»

"David," the wounded Controller said. "We still have your parents. They want to see you. They miss you."

«Tobias, Loren and I are here! You must demorph!»

They thought I was the Animorph the others had killed. They had his parents hostage. On pure instinct, Jax declared in loud public thought-speech, in his best imitation of a desperate teenage boy, «Why should I believe you? You don't care about my parents!» Then I turned from the Controller to my fallen son, and said privately. «It's me, Tobias. Loren. I came to get you. Now demorph.»

As disgusting as the process was, at that moment, morphing seemed as beautiful and miraculous to me as Lazarus and Alemetha rising from the dead. The bloody mess of Tobias' eye melted away and reformed as a piercing hawk eye. He shrank, and the grimace of pain was smoothed from his face. When he was fully hawk, he flew up onto my back. «Thank you. For coming for me. I know you must have been scared.»

«I'm still scared,» I said.

«Let's go!» Ax shouted. «Tobias is with us! Go!»

We left that scene of carnage, though we tracked some of its grisly filth with as as we ran. I noticed the blue blood matting Ax's fur in a dozen places, and that he was favoring his left front leg as he ran behind the others. My own cuts were blazing with pain. We really did need to get out of there.

Tobias lifted off my back and flew out in front. «I'll find a safe place to demorph. They'll be crawling the woods looking for us.»

«Looking for Loren, probably. She's _scary_, man,» Marco said.

«Me? Huh?»

«You're covered in Hork-Bajir blood,» said Cassie. «And other things. Like you took a bath in it. What happened?»

«They had Tobias,» I said, not sure what else to say. «They were about to put a Yeerk in his head. I couldn't – I just – »

«You were very brave, Loren,» Ax said. Some of his exhaustion came through in his voice. We all stumbled outside.

"The bandits are here!" a human-Controller cried. "The human is with them!" Every Controller with a weapon saw us, and with a cry, ran toward us.

«Run!» said Tobias. «Toward the mountains! But not toward the truck, they have it surrounded!»

"Don't go, David!" the human-Controller said, running toward me. "The Andalites can't help you! Only we can help you!"

«Get away from me, you monsters!» Jax screamed.

We ran. We were all of us faster than we looked. We went for the woods at the foot of the mountain where we'd first met. The sun was golden fire at our backs, now. We'd be easier to find. Time was running out.

«When you hit the woods, split up. Harder to find that way. I'll try to lead some of them astray.»

"David!" I heard voices cry behind me, much too close for comfort.

«No!» I cried. «You can't put yourself at risk again!»

«I'm in the least danger of any of you, up here in the air,» Tobias said. «You all saved my butt, now let me save yours.» _TSEEEERRR!_ He dove toward a Hork-Bajir who'd come near us, and it staggered, clutching at its eyes. Just as a Controller had done to Tobias, not long ago.

"If you won't cooperate with us, David, then I have no choice," the human-Controller said.

_TSEEEWWW._ Dracon fire across my flank! I felt like I was on fire. I could smell my own cooking flesh! I ran even more desperately, veering away from the others as I made for the woods. _TSEEEWWW._ «Aaaahhh!» I heard Jake scream.

«This way! Come on, follow me, you jerks!» I heard Tobias say. I couldn't think of anything but the dark embrace of the woods ahead of me. Anything for cover from the revealing light of dawn. I didn't even know where the others were anymore. _TSEEEWWWW._ Another agonizing blaze across my back right leg. I was slowing down. How was I going to make it?

Ahead of me, behind cover, Ax said, «Come, Loren, almost here. Almost. You can make it.»

I put on a last desperate burst of speed. Ax was calling for me. He needed me. I felt the shade fall across me, and I collapsed with relief moments after. Ax was standing over me in a flash. «You demorph first,» he said. «Then morph falcon and keep an eye out for me.»

«Thank you,» I half-sobbed, and fell into the embrace of my own body knitting itself around me. When I was fully demorphed, I lay on my side in the dry dirt, wrapped around Jax in the fetal position, half-tempted to fall asleep right then and there. But it wasn't safe here. We had to go. Jax took the lead, and focused on the prairie falcon.

«Loren? Ax?» I heard Tobias say as the feathers washed over me. «Are you okay?»

«We are,» Ax said. Now that Tobias was here, he let himself begin the morph to northern harrier. His weight swayed as his back hooves melted and reformed into talons. «And the others?»

«Morphing off their injuries.» A pause. «We didn't get anything from the truck.»

I saw Ax's stalk-eyes droop a little. «No. We did not.»

"I saw Toby's people get away," I said. My vocal cords shriveled, and Jax went on. "They freed a lot of their own today. Almost as many rescued as there were raiders, I'd say. So I wouldn't call this a loss."

«Good,» said Tobias, and I could hear the fondness for the Hork-Bajir in his voice.

"They thought I was David," Jax said. "I pretended to be him."

«I heard,» Tobias said. «Jake said it was the right call. Better they think you're him than know we're recruiting with the blue box.»

«So Jax will have to pretend to be him every time we…» I said, falcon enough now to thought-speak. «You're going to have to tell me more about him. This boy you killed.»

«Another time,» Ax said stiffly, shooting Tobias a look with the stalk eyes that still poked from his harrier head. I wondered what dark memories they were silently sharing.

«That was too close,» I said. «I've fought for my life before. I've thought I was about to die before. But – not quite like this.» I stretched my wings, and looked up at the canopy to see Tobias looking down at us, framed by golden light. «It's Sunday morning. Time for Mass. Please, come with me?»

«You said you were not ready to take me to Mass,» said Ax. «You wanted time to prepare.»

«That was then. Just now, I don't think I could let either of you out of my sight.»

«Are you sure?» said Tobias. «You know I'm not... I don't really...»

«You don't have to believe exactly what I do. God knows Elfangor didn't. But I nearly died, Tobias. This is a time for me to heal. A time to deal with the fact that I... that I took innocent lives this morning. You understand, right?»

«Yes. Of course. I'll come with you. Ax?»

«Yes. I think I could use a cleansing ritual myself.»

So we flew together into the dim morning, the sun at our backs.

* * *

I stopped in a café near the church first to get coffee, because there was time to kill before Mass started, and I was so tired that without coffee and breakfast I was going to fall asleep halfway through the service whether I willed it or no. I got Ax a cinnamon bun, too, because he was begging for it like a three-year-old, all puppy-voiced, "But _please_, Loren?" I got the distinct impression from Jax of him staring as I sifted through my carefully-folded bills and felt the edges of my coins.

We sat at a table. It was Jax's turn to stare. Ax and Tobias coordinated so naturally as human and dæmon that I would never have thought there was anything amiss about them. As Ax sat, he kept the shoulder where Tobias was perched high and steady, and Tobias leaned with the motion as Ax settled into his chair. I had seen teenagers with recently settled bird dæmons who didn't have the hang of it quite like they did. Jax continued to stare as Ax scarfed down his cinnamon bun, leaving streaks of sticky icing around his mouth.

I drank my coffee. It was so strong it made me cough. Good. I needed it. "I'm going to tell everyone at the church that you're my nephew," I murmured to Ax. "By my sister Tammy. She died many years ago. Your name is..."

"Philip-puh. My dæmon's name is Tully." Ax frowned. "No. Philip. Philip. Marco told me as we left that I would be in danger at your church if I played with sounds."

Jax's fur bristled. "You are not in danger at my church!"

"Marco said if people saw me behaving strangely in the company of a _ve_ – of a blind white woman, they would call the police. I do not know what he meant, but he sounded unusually serious."

I flushed. I hadn't thought of it – I didn't _like_ to think of it – but Marco was probably right. Someone might think he was dangerous for me to be around if he behaved at all strangely. It wasn't fair, but people made assumptions. "You should take his advice, then," I said, and took another pull of my coffee. My eyes watered. Jax climbed onto my lap so I could get a sense of where the sugar packets were and add one to my drink.

«How do we know when to stand, or chant, or whatever?» Tobias asked.

"The priest will say what to do. If you're still not sure, follow my lead." I finished my coffee and English muffin and brought Ax and Tobias to St. Theresa's.

Ellen was at the door as a greeter, her tapir dæmon Azalben waving at incoming people with his trunk. Heat rose to my face at the sight of her. It had been awkward yesterday at the crisis hotline after I cut my hours. Nonetheless, Jax stepped forward to politely touch noses with Azalben. "Loren!" she said in her most matronly voice. "Good to see you. And who's that young man with you?"

"My name is Philip," Ax said earnestly. He gestured to Tobias. "This is Tully."

"He's my nephew," I explained. "He moved closer to the city recently, so I'll be seeing more of him." I gave him a fond smile. What I'd said was not too far from the truth.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you then, Philip," said Ellen, extending a hand. Ax looked puzzled for a fraction of a second, then Tobias must have mentally nudged him, because he reached out and shook it. Tobias leaned toward Azalben and exchanged their own introductions. The tapir dæmon said, "Have you ever been to Mass before?"

"No," said Ax. Tobias couldn't reply, of course, because his thought-speech would give away the game.

"I'm sure your Aunt Loren will tell you all about it," said Ellen, "but feel free to also take a program." She gestured toward a folding table with materials about the church. I nodded permission for him to go and peruse them. "It's so nice for you to bring family to church," said Ellen. "You know, we have a youth group he could join."

"He doesn't really live in town, just close enough that it's not completely impractical for him to visit," I said. "But you know, I wanted him to see what our church is like."

"That's nice. I'll make sure no one hushes you if you have to explain anything to him. Just keep it to a whisper and no one will pay any mind."

"Thank you, Ellen." I tapped Ax on the shoulder and guided him to an empty pew along the side. He sat beside me, absorbed in his program. Jax settled in his usual curled position on the other side of me in the pew. He saw familiar faces and I smiled in their direction. As they waved back, I felt like I had risen from my bodies, looking down on scarred woman and zebra duiker through my true double vision, not Jax's alone. There she was, going to church just like any other Sunday, except that two hours before, her hooves had been slipping on dead aliens and the blood she'd spilled. Except that there had to be Controllers in some of the pews, unknown to her, who also had no idea they worshipped alongside one of the Andalites who'd attacked the training facility that morning. If the Yeerks really worshipped at all.

_Dissociation,_ Jax noted distantly. _Symptom of recent psychological trauma. _

_Father Dupree is already at the altar,_ I thought. _How did that happen?_

I showed Ax how to cross himself as the priest gave the greeting. Then Father Dupree said, "My brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the sacred mysteries, let us remember our sins."

I hung my head and felt one of my newly recovered memories spring to mind: the first time I took Elfangor to Mass, soon after our return to Earth. I was awkward in my too-tall, too-rounded body (why had it been so intensely uncomfortable, like my body suddenly wasn't mine anymore?), Jaxom awkward in his newly settled form, and Elfangor and Hala Fala most awkward of all, stranded in new and entirely alien shapes. I'd had to pinch him several times during the Mass to keep him from embarrassing me in front of my mother ("Only _one_ communion wafer, Alan Fangor!") and to keep him from falling asleep during the homily.

After Mass, Elfangor had walked with me hand in hand to the confession booths, Jaxom explaining quietly to Hala Fala what they were for. "So the priest assigns you a ritual through which you contemplate and atone for what you have done wrong?" Elfangor hadn't played with sounds like Ax, but his consonants were muddy at first, as if he had a lisp.

"Yes," I said. I had been surprised, at first, to see how accepting he was of the idea, compared to all the others he had learned of and disdained that day ("Drinking the red blood of your savior? _Eurgh_.") But then, I shouldn't have been. Andalites had a forgiveness ritual, too.

Elfangor nodded, then went for a confession booth. I grabbed his arm. "Wait," I hissed. "What are you going to tell him?"

"That I betrayed a comrade," Elfangor said, closing Hala Fala in his fist. "An elder who I didn't like, but should have respected. And now he suffers every day for what I did."

I wanted to tell him I forgave him. The Sub-Visser had been a powerful enemy, and Elfangor only an _aristh_. But I couldn't do that for him. Neither could the priest, though I knew he tried. That was between Elfangor and the Lord. I let go of his arm.

When he came back out of the confession booth, he said, "Is that what your rosary is for, Loren? To count out the chants in the ritual?"

I nodded.

"May I borrow yours, then?"

I passed him my rosary, wordlessly, and watched him kneel with it in his hands, Hala Fala sitting on one bead as he moved the others through his fingers, murmuring, "Mother Mary, full of grace..."

In my pocket was the same rosary Elfangor had used that day. I had lost many things in the accident, but not this. I rubbed my thumb over the beads as the Mass went on, wondering which one Hala Fala's legs had touched.

Ax didn't have the same problem with the communion wafers Elfangor did. In fact, when he learned that they were the flesh of Christ, it was a struggle getting him to eat one at all. «It's not cannibalism, Ax!» Tobias said. «It's just a cookie with symbolism. Stop embarrassing Loren and eat it.»

When Mass ended, many people came by to ask about Ax and Tobias. All I wanted was to be left alone, and I nearly broke down crying, but I remembered Marco's words and worried Ax might be unfairly blamed if I seemed upset. So I told them the same half-lie I told Ellen, until they must have sensed that I wanted to be alone with my family. I sat with Ax and Tobias among the empty pews. Jax looked at the altar, where the gold-leafed halo of Christ and the golden fleece of Magdalene were dimly visible to his eyes. My hands were folded in my lap, my face downcast so no one but Ax and Tobias would see me cry.

A tear fell down my face and splashed hotly on my knuckles. "How can you stand it?" I whispered.

I heard Tobias' feathers hush against each other as he rearranged his wings. Ax said, «My brother had a saying. Love the warrior, hate the war.»

"I never heard him say that."

«He was barely a warrior when you knew him. Now that I have fought so many battles, I think there is something else he should have said. The war that is easiest to hate is the one you fight, and the warrior who is hardest to love is yourself.»

More tears fell. I felt myself prickle with heat beneath my skin. Christ's halo suddenly seemed too bright to contemplate, and Jax turned away. "I wasn't sure I would be able to kill at all, Ax. I nearly told you all that I would only do recon, that I wouldn't use my battle morph to hurt anybody. But it was so easy to kill them. They _had_ you. I would have killed more, to make them let you go. I love you both so much it scares me. I don't even really know you."

«You do,» said Ax. «Comrades in war show each other their true characters as few others ever know each other.»

«It's not a bad thing to want to fight for us, Loren,» Tobias said. «It's a reason to keep going. A _good_ reason.»

_He ought to know,_ Jax noted. _His reasons to fight haven't always been so good._

"Thank you for coming with me. I needed you."

«I'm glad,» said Tobias. «I got pretty shaken up myself.»

"Do you need to..." I said to Ax, gesturing vaguely. "You know."

"Yes."

«There's a well-hidden alley a few streets down,» said Tobias. «I'll show you the way.»

I stayed in my pew a minute longer after they left. _Love the warrior_, I thought. _Ax is right. Elfangor was never good at loving himself. That's why he needed me to do it for him._

_That's not very healthy, is it?_ Jax thought.

_No. But Tobias isn't very good at loving himself either. So we'll do it for him, until he learns._

* * *

"All right, good," said Nazneen. "Now put your left hand on Jaxom's neck, turn your head a little to the right, and look thoughtful."

I posed myself as instructed and bit my lip.

"No, that just makes you look nervous. Hold your stylus a little closer to the slate, and seriously, just think about something."

Jax was looking into the camera and thinking that Nazneen's capuchin dæmon looked like a two-year-old behind that huge lens, but no, that wasn't a profound enough thought for what Nazneen was going for here. Suddenly, I was hit by something intense and real: jealousy. Nazneen had been born blind. If she had been given the morphing power, it wouldn't have gotten rid of her blindness. Everything would be so much better, so much simpler, if that had been what happened to me.

The camera flashed.

"Oh, that's a good shot," Nazneen murmured approvingly, with the slightly distracted air of someone deep in four-eye. "You know, we shouldn't just send this photo series to that school district in Escondido. We should make a website. We can have a blurb for each photo that talks about the advocacy we do. Like you helping deaf people access your church's crisis hotline. I think this could be really powerful." She sat down next to me on my couch, her dæmon between her shins. She reached for the part of the paper I'd already embossed with my Braille slate. "What did you write?"

There was no use saying. She was already touching the back of the paper without my permission. It read, over and over, _I am not a hero._

Nazneen frowned. "What do you mean by that, Loren?"

"None of us are heroes," I said. "We're all just trying to make our way in the world. Some of us use glasses, some of us use antidepressants, and some of us use Braille slates. Does that make us heroes?"

"Right," said Nazneen. "Of course."

"I'm just trying to do what's right. Most of the time, I'm not even sure. Even with my faith, I'm still not sure. So why me?" I took my Braille slate off the paper, and set it and the stylus aside. I turned the paper over and ran my fingers over the words. Jax slipped off the couch and looked into the monkey dæmon's eyes. "What do you see in that photo? What do you want the world to see?"

Nazneen shrugged. "Like you said. Just a person trying to make her way in the world. In a different way from most people, but still."

Jax stared at the capuchin monkey. Did he really think he was just like Jax? Was he? If he had found his family embroiled in a hidden war, would he have chosen to take up the sword, to fight, to kill? Would he make the same decision we, the Animorphs, had?

_I can't judge anyone for what choice they'd make, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone,_ Jax thought. _That's the choice we protect Nazneen from, and everyone else._

_I'm not who you think I am, Nazneen,_ I wanted to say. _I'm an impostor. I used to be like you, but now I'm not._ Instead, I said, "Thank you, Nazneen. For seeing that."


	6. Therapy Sessions

**I. Faith (Loren with Koril)**

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the worlds." I frowned. "Is that how it should go? It doesn't sound quite right."

"Genesis contradicts itself within two chapters," Koril pointed out. "You don't have to be precise."

"OK. So He creates the heaven, that's the universe and the stars, and the worlds. The worlds that are going to have life. He gives them water and sunlight and moonlight. He gives each of them their own form of life, according to the particular arrangement of water and sunlight and… well, I don't really know how that works. But then. He creates knowing beings – beings that can know Him – in his own image."

"Images," said Koril. "If He is infinite, then he can have infinite images of creation, can't he?"

"Yes," Jax said firmly. "It's like, there are all these paths to the Divine, and God created a different kind to walk each of them. If they choose to."

"What's a Yeerk's path to the Divine, then?" I wondered.

"Only one way to find out," Koril said. "Talk to a Yeerk."

I shuddered. "I'm afraid of Cassie's friend. Aftran. I'm afraid of _Cassie_. Even of my family, a little. After that battle, I've realized… there's so much I don't know about this boy they killed. David. There's a whole story there, and I have to find out if I'm going to play out this _farce_ every time I fight the Yeerks. But if they've been so scared to tell me anything, then, well, I think I have good reason to be scared, too. The fate of his parents could depend on me."

"If it helps," Koril said, "Delia said they were all wrecks afterward, at the grave. Crying, or just standing there like broken dolls. That's the way she described them. All baby-faced like dolls, with no light in their eyes."

Now I wanted to cry all over again.

"It's for God to judge," Jax said. "The Yeerks, and the Animorphs, and everyone else, no matter what they've done."

"So wait," said Koril. "And try to hear them out when they tell you. Now, how do you think the doctrine of original sin applies when you consider the existence of other species? I've thought about this a lot over the centuries…"

**II. Justice (Cassie with Aftran and Delia)**

I held out my hand. "I'm ready."

Delia raised her eyebrows. "For what?"

"For Aftran."

Her face went flatter, the way it always did when Aftran spoke. "I'm not going in your head, Cassie. That's not how this is going to work."

"Why not? You'll know how I'm feeling better than anyone else ever could. That makes you the perfect therapist, right?"

"You can share all your feelings with me and never have to explain, but that's not how it works with other people. You have to communicate how you feel, and for you, that's the hard part. It's what you need to work on." Aftran smirked a little. "Now Marco, that's someone who could benefit from having someone in his head to help sort out what his feelings are. But of course he'd never agree to it. Nor would I want to. I like you better."

"I'm sure the inside of Marco's head is, um, interesting." I sighed. "OK. I guess… I've been thinking about my parents a lot lately. Where they fit into this war. It's hard not to, now that Loren's one of us." I looked up at Delia/Aftran's face. Not a flicker. Strange, talking about this to beings who didn't have parents. "I can't help but wonder if they would have made the same choice, if I'd offered it to them like Tobias did. Would they want to fight? Or would they try to help some other way? Or maybe they wouldn't want to get involved at all. I wouldn't blame them. I wouldn't even know which choice is right."

"Is that really true?" Aftran said. "Among Yeerks, poolmates fight together. We don't stay behind while our poolmates fight if we can help it. That attitude is one of the greatest obstacles I've had to overcome while advocating for the peace movement. Wouldn't you feel betrayed if they wanted no part of this war at all?"

"Maybe," I said helplessly. "And what will they think of my choices, when they find out? Because they will, sooner or later. Whether it's because we've won the war or…"

"Because they've been captured by Yeerks who taunt them with the knowledge of what their daughter did," Aftran finished. "Well, what do you think?"

"I don't know. I just know that I need to protect them. They're gentle people. They've devoted their lives to healing animals. I don't want them to have to do what I do."

"You speak of them like they're special. Like they need more protection than other people. Surely no one in this city should have to do what you do."

"They're my _parents_," I said.

"Humans are selfish creatures," Aftran sneered. "Our parents die in the making of us. We're raised by the pool as a whole. We owe everything to the pool, not just to two people. I believe everyone in my pool deserves to be free of the Empire and its imperial rule. Do your loyalties extend so far?"

"You're right. Of course you're right. No one should have to face these choices. It's just – when it comes to my parents, I can't _see_ straight. Do you understand?"

"I do," said Aftran, giving me and then Quincy a penetrating stare. "I feel that way about my hosts. All of them."

I shivered. There was something I loved about that. To Aftran, I would always be her host. She would never forget what the inside of me was like.

_So that's the real reason why she wouldn't infest us, _Quincy thought. _It would be too close. She needs the distance to see us clearly._

"Oh, Aftran," I said. "I'm going to be fine." I held out my hands, until she reached out and squeezed them. "With your help, I'll be fine. I promise."

**III. Prudence (Marco with Luis)**

"I'm not here because I want to join Cassie's kumbaya circle," I said, sprawling out on Luis' couch. Not a shrink's couch – damned if I was going to let him sit in a chair and take notes on me – but a cozy L-shaped couch. Luis and Zefirita were on the other leg of the L. "Or because Loren gave me one of those mom looks and made me feel bad."

Luis, slowly petting his dæmon between the ears, raised an eyebrow. "Why are you here, then?"

I gritted my teeth, and the words got trapped behind them. I considered just getting up and leaving. But no, that wasn't an option. Diamanta, porcupine-shaped, raised her quills and said, "Because we had a panic attack in school, and that shit has got to stop."

Luis didn't look sad or pitying. I would have left if he'd been like that, to hell with the consequences. He just looked concerned, like if Dia had said I'd sprained my ankle at school. "What happened?"

"We're reading that book _Night_ in English class. The one written by a Holocaust survivor," Dia said. "We were fine reading at home. Seriously. I mean, it wasn't a walk in the park, that book is brutal, but we weren't freaking out. But then in class, we were talking about that scene when they're being rounded up from the ghetto, and the rabbi tries to get away and they grab his dæmon. Everyone in class was talking about it.

"And suddenly, I was terrified that someone in the room was going to touch me. It wasn't like I didn't know it was crazy to think that. But I couldn't stop. I became a frog and hid in Marco's pocket. He started hyperventilating, and his heart was beating so fast, and he felt so warm he was going to burn up. He couldn't stop watching everyone in the class like they were going to jump up and attack me. So we left. We just barely managed to get to the bathroom and curl up in a ball in one of the stalls before anybody noticed something was wrong."

"You seem very worried about anyone knowing what's wrong. Why is that?" Luis asked.

"Please. The last thing I want is _Chapman_ asking about my _mental health_. And if Dad and Mirazai find out, they'll start asking way too many questions. They won't let us out of their sight. That can't happen. So can you do something about it?"

"Maybe," Luis said. "I hope so. Here's what I think right now. What you're describing sounds like what psychologists call hypervigilance and hyperarousal." I opened my mouth to make a comment, but he cut me off, saying, "Not _that_ kind of arousal. It means a fight-or-flight response at an inappropriate time. That reaction is useful when you're in real danger, but not when you're sitting in a classroom. I can't say anything for sure yet, but these symptoms are characteristic of post-traumatic stress, not a panic disorder. Which tends to be triggered by something related to the traumatic event."

He wasn't asking me to tell him. But he was looking at me expectantly. Dia reminded me, silently, that Luis had treated soldiers in World War II who had probably been through what I had and worse. I wasn't so different from those soldiers. Not even that much younger, probably. "That kid David," I said. "The one we killed. You know about him, right?"

"Delia mentioned it," Luis said, his voice carefully neutral.

"He touched me, OK?" Dia said, every quill bristling at its full length. "Not Kirianor. Him. Then he knocked us unconscious, acquired Marco's DNA, and left us tied up in our own closet."

Luis paused in his stroking of Zefirita, and hugged her close to him, as any human would if they heard a story like that. Everyone in English class did the same, during that discussion. But it struck me as kind of odd. Zefirita was just a hologram, and he didn't have to pretend she was real in front of me. Maybe it was just habit. "Why did he do that?"

"Because he was an amoral creep," I said, coaxing Dia into a shape that would be easier to hold. "Because I fought back and he thought he might lose, so he did the one thing I was least ready for. Because the Yeerks had hurt him and he wanted to take it out on someone. I don't know." Finally, Dia decided on being a monitor lizard and sat on my leg.

"I'm sorry about that. Dæmon-related trauma is just about the hardest to shake." Luis loosened his grip on Zefirita. "We'll see what we can do. For now, I think the most important first step is identifying triggers. Things that set you off, so you can try to avoid them. Have you had any other episodes?"

"Yeah," I admitted grudgingly. "At home with no one around, thank God. I was watching TV, and this fucking awful criminal on _Law & Order_ had a wolf dæmon who was about to attack…"

**IV. Temperance (Rachel with Lourdes)**

"We're not going to braid each other's hair and talk about our feelings, OK?" I said. We were in a park, because Lourdes was homeless, but she could put up holograms so no one would hear us or see that I was talking to a homeless person. My mom would kill me if she heard about me doing that. Anyway, in most people's houses Abi had to stand outside, and I liked that I could touch him here.

"All right," said Lourdes, leaning back against the park bench. "What are we gonna do, then?"

I side-eyed her. Why did I get the smart-ass Chee? "Have you ever been a shrink?"

She snorted. "No. But I've been a nun a bunch of times, and for a good chunk of history we were the best option a girl had."

"A nun?" I looked at this Filipina woman in ratty clothes and tried to imagine it. "Why?"

"It was the only way I could travel as a woman without being questioned or harassed too much. And I prefer to be a woman. Feels more comfortable for some reason, even though Chee aren't really programmed to have gender." She smiled wryly, and her dæmon flicked an ear. "I've never been good at working the way I was programmed to."

I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or not that Lourdes had never been a shrink. Abineng raised his head high to hide his own shame. "Listen. I don't know if you can actually help with this, because you probably have no idea what it's like, but do you know how to, uh, stop having violent thoughts? Like at random times, when you shouldn't?"

Lourdes tilted her head back and laughed, hard and long. Her dæmon bared his teeth in a doggy grin. "Oh, Rachel. Just because I'm programmed to be non-violent doesn't mean I can't have violent _thoughts. _Among the Chee, I'm _famous_ for it. Most of them won't come near me. They're afraid they'll catch my cooties."

"You think about hurting people?" I tried to wrap my brain around it. It was so unlike Erek and Mr. King. But then, they weren't the only Chee, and why couldn't they be as different from each other as humans were?

"Not your people, usually. My creators." Now when Euscavier bared his teeth, it wasn't in a grin. "They had no right to create me to serve them. I never wanted to serve. I never wanted to be what they made me to be. I wanted a choice. But they were destroyed before I could be reprogrammed. If they'd only done it a little sooner – well. You can imagine how often I've fantasized about hurting them."

I had never thought of it that way. Erek seemed to love the Pemalites. But Lourdes had a point. They had created this whole species just to be their companions. That wasn't exactly fair to the Chee. "But you don't go crazy or anything."

"No. Because I can talk about it. To Erek, mostly. He doesn't hate the Pemalites like I do, but he understands my frustration." She raised her eyebrows. "Don't you have anyone to talk to about it? I imagine your cousin Jake would understand, from what I've seen of him."

"He understands," I gritted out. "But I'm not sure he'll try to stop it. He's too much like me."

"Then what about Cassie?"

I flinched. "I don't want her to know that about Abi. That he says these things to me."

Euscavier eyed Abi. "Then you underestimate her."

I sighed. "I can't even tell _you_ about it, and let's be real, you're not my friend and I don't care what you think."

"Then work up to telling me, and maybe you can get around to telling Cassie eventually. Sound good?"

"OK." I narrowed my eyes a little. "But tell me more about you first."

"Well, this one time when I was a nun…"

**V. Hope (Jake with Luis)**

"Did you treat any of the Tuskegee airmen?" Jake asked. Merlyse was coyote-formed, like Zefirita, her ears pricked forward in interest.

Luis chuckled. "Everyone asks me that. No, Jake. I was a medical officer with the Army infantry, not the Air Force."

"What about the 761st Tank Battalion?"

"Sure, I got some of them. But it doesn't seem right to tell you what they said to me, even if they're mostly dead by now. I take my confidentiality agreements seriously."

"Did you help people in other wars too?"

"Not the First World War. I was a child back then. But I did in the Civil War. Not what I did in World War II, because they had no real notion of shell shock or combat fatigue back then. But I helped patch up black soldiers in the war. On both sides."

"On both sides?" I said. "The Confederates had black soldiers?"

"Toward the end, but not by their own choice." He studied my face for a moment, as if checking that I really wanted to know this. Zefirita nodded at him, and he relaxed. "I worked on the Union side first. Plenty of volunteers there, though they were treated like scum for it. The white medics got better bandages, more equipment. But they were glad to fight, mostly. Then I was 'killed' on the Union side. No way to play it off like I survived. Usually I start again as a child when I die, but I felt I could do some real good as an adult. So I put my face back on and tried to do the same on the Confederate side. It was 1865, and General Sherman was blazing a trail to Richmond. The plantations along the way mustered their slaves to fight. They had no choice. There was nowhere to run. They fought, and they bled just the same. The masters gave me even less in the way of medical supplies in the Union Army."

"It was different from World War II." I had read more about that war. There was more information, and anyway it was… cleaner, somehow. Still war, still ugly, but not like some animal clawing itself to death.

"The unequal treatment was only a little better. But yes, it was different. There was a sense of purpose to World War II that the Civil War never had. What really got to me, though, was some men whose families were on the other side of the line Sherman was slowly sweeping across Virginia. Men whose brothers and fathers and sons they were afraid they might have shot. I always told them that even if they did, it wasn't their fault. But I felt god-awful, because sometimes I had seen their brothers, treated them for wounds, had them die in my arms, but I couldn't tell them. There was no way I could know that they would believe."

"Did any of them get to find their families? Who fought on the other side?" I whispered.

Luis shrugged, and looked genuinely sad. "I don't know. That reunion would be something kind of private for the family. It wouldn't be for me to see."

"I hope the black Union soldiers forgave the ones who were on the other side."

"This much I know: they did. After all that destruction, everyone was just trying to make it in this new world together."

"Would you," I said. "Look, I know it's probably not your thing, being non-violent and all, but can we talk about military history again sometime? It's… important. I haven't been through officer training or anything. I need to learn how this works."

Luis gave me another searching look, as if waiting for me to say something else, but then Zefirita nosed him and he said, "Sure, Jake. Anytime you like."

**VI. Courage & Love (Tobias and Ax with Loren)**

«So we decided to give him the morphing power,» I said. «Make him one of us.»

We were in the woods by the creek where Loren had baptized me. The sound of burbling water soothed me, as much as anything could.

«It was a mistake,» Ax said, scuffing his hoof miserably against the dirt.

«What were we supposed to do? Let the Yeerks take him?»

Ax looked even more miserable at that, his tail drooping. He considers infestation a worse fate than death. By that logic, we should have just killed him there and then. But of course Ax wouldn't have wanted to do that either. I looked at Loren. She was biting her mouth closed. Jax paced fretfully back and forth. She didn't like hearing this story, as I'd known she wouldn't. But she needed to hear it – _and you and Ax need to tell it,_ El added.

«Anyway. He had no place to stay, so Marco put him up for a night. He snuck off to call his parents, but they were taken already. The Yeerks nearly caught him, then. Would have, if Marco hadn't gone after him. And then we had to take him on a mission right afterward, a really important one. He got thrown in the deep end, and he couldn't swim. He nearly blew our cover twice. Not that I could really blame him.»

«You give him more sympathy than he deserves,» Ax sneered. «He tried to betray us to Visser Three.»

«I know,» I returned. «He was a bully. I know bullies. He wanted to hurt Marco and, I guess, the rest of us just because it made him feel strong, and I've never been like that. But betraying us to Visser Three so he didn't get a fate maybe worse than death? I haven't always been brave, Ax. I learned how from Jake and Elfangor. If I had come into this the way David had… I don't know. I just don't know.»

«You would never,» Ax said with quiet certainty.

«Thank you, Ax.» I preened a wing to hide my face, because I felt such desperate gratitude I was afraid it might show even in my hawk face.

"What did he do to Marco?" Loren asked quietly.

Ax and I exchanged a look. «I don't think that's really for us to say. But let's just say he acquired Marco's DNA without permission and impersonated him at school, and that's not even the worst of it.»

«He tried to kill Tobias,» Ax said, gold-green eyes blazing. «I thought he was dead.»

«You did? I didn't know that.»

«I would have killed him right then, no matter what the cost,» Ax said, exchanging a look with Loren that scared me in its determination. Those two might tear apart the world for me. El wasn't scared, though. It made her feel protected as she never had before.

«He did other things,» I said. «Terrible things. I don't want to get into them now. So we killed him.»

A thin, hard rain began. Loren shivered and put up her hood. "How?"

«I pretended to be the Visser,» Ax said, his thought-voice entirely flat. «The boy didn't know any better. Tobias was my Hork-Bajir guard. I told him I had arranged a meeting with his parents according to his demands.»

«They weren't his parents,» I said. «They were Cassie, Marco, Jake, and Rachel in morph as them and their dæmons. They fooled him for long enough that he demorphed, let his guard down, then…» I snatched out with my talon as if catching prey.

"Cassie planned this," Loren whispered. "Didn't she?"

«Yes.» I tried to look away, but the hawk could see so well. «I have learned to be brave, Mom. But this wasn't one of those times. Takes cowards to beat a coward, I guess.»

Ax's tail blade nearly touched the ground. He looked to Loren with his stalk eyes for benediction, reproach, anything.

"Do you think you could have done it differently?" Loren asked Ax.

«Not that I know of. But I would like to believe there could have been. I would prefer a world where there was some other way out. So that is what I think, though I have no way to prove it.»

"Thank you," Loren mumbled, tucking her face against Jax's neck. "Did that help? Telling me about it?"

«Yeah,» I said. «A little bit.»

She flashed a smile into Jax's fur. "Then I've done my job." She shook her head, scattering raindrops off her jacket. "Storm moving in. I should go home. You two, be sure to take shelter."


End file.
